


NIBAI MUGENDAI

by PokeNirvash



Category: Original Work
Genre: Action, Beer, Blacksuits - Freeform, Cigarettes, Cybernetics, Cyborgs, Fighting, Future, Gen, Mask, Nagoya, Regeneration, Vigilante, Weapons, alley, firearms, pilot chapter, written in 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:06:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 29,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25841806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PokeNirvash/pseuds/PokeNirvash
Summary: In the year 2099, a shadowy criminal organization known as SORE makes preparations to take over Japan within the shadows of the technologically advanced city of Nagoya. A female vigilante dedicated to stopping SORE's schemes does battle with them whenever the situation arises, and on one such night, the battle in question results in a civilian casualty. And in reviving college student Takashi Fujishima with what little she has on hand, the PHEROMONE Motoko's slightly underhanded act of altruism brings about a new threat to SORE's mission, perhaps the greatest they've ever faced.A novelization-style pilot script for a longer, slightly more epic idea.





	1. The Story Itself

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, everyone. Some of you may know me by name from various websites. The [adult swim] Message Boards, the Uneven Edge Message Boards, Twitter... After posting my first completed "hypothetical anime", Kinky Kunoichi, to three different sites, I thought I'd take another step forward and share one of my greatest ideas, one that began in 2006 when a screenshot from an anime none of you have heard of planted the seeds for not just this, but every hypothetical anime I've made and (less often) stuck with since. I originally wrote 20 chapters plus change from 2008 to 2010, rewrote 12 plus change from 2011 to 2013 (all but one of which are lost forever), and decided to rewrite it once again from 2014 to 2016, only to encounter hiatus and move my efforts towards Kunoichi instead. And now, after much reflection, I've decided to share the only completed chapter of this second rewrite with an audience that probably won't know it's even there on average. It's rough around the edges and a little stilted due to embracing the "anime" format in how it's described more than Kunoichi, but even so, I hope you enjoy it.

It began as darkness, but only for a second. The darkness started to fade, revealing an upwards pan on an office building, which stopped upon reaching the top. Atop the building’s roof was a girl, her hands behind her back as she ran along the edge.

Even up-close, the girl’s face was at this point unrecognizable, without a doubt due to the glowing green heart-shaped mask over her face. A small antenna jutted out from the top of the mask, blue in color and connected to the mask with a smaller yellow heart. Her indigo hair looked to be fairly messy, but not to the point of appearing unkempt.

From behind her mask, which gave her point-of-view an obvious green tint, the girl looked straight out, beyond the building and at the skyline beyond. At least, she did so initially, as she then looked down and to the right, into the alleyway alongside the edge of the building she was running across. A computerized target laid in the center of her vision, but after a second of her looking down in the alley, the target darted to the upper right-hand corner of the mask’s interior screen. A zoomed-in shot of where the target now laid, which maximized itself before the girl’s eyes, showed a black Mitsubishi GTO slowly driving into the alley and braking to a stop.

“Target confirmed.”

The girl ran across the building for a second or two more, and then shifted over to the left, jumping up off the edge of the building. She disappeared for a second, but then she came back, initiating a pan down to the alley below. She landed in a crouching position, and then stood up, putting one hand on her knee before straightening out. Once standing, she tilted her head back, the light from a streetlamp attached to the outer wall of the building reflecting off her heart mask.

The standing shot of the girl also showed off her full appearance. She was of average height, her body practically defined by her large breasts; her hips weren’t large enough to make her truly curvaceous, but they were fairly noticeable. She wore what appeared to be some sort of sentai uniform. The top of the outfit consisted of a light blue spandex that went from the nape of her neck to the bottom of her breast line. The area beneath her bust was blue, extending to a short loincloth after two columns of gold buttons, three on either side. The loincloth stopped at her upper thighs, also covered in light blue spandex, which visibly stopped at the tops of her boots, long and blue with wider, circular cut-off points just above the knees. Her gloves were the same, but with a darker blue stripe swirling around the fingerless gauntlets before stopping at the circular cut-off points halfway up the upper arm. Under the girl’s neck was a transparent pink heart, attached to her back was a cape that hung down behind her, and on her shoulders were shoulderpads that had a dark blue cross on them. Fixed upon her shoulderpads were two boxy and rectangular compartments with four doors on each, and resting over her ears were two cone-shaped device akin to headphones that too had blue stripes swirling around them.

The girl stood in the middle of the empty alley, staring down the GTO parked several feet away at the end. From her POV, the target focused on the GTO as it produced yet another zoomed-in shot. This shot focused on the driver of the car: a man in his 40s, with short brown hair and an exposed forehead, wearing a black suit and tie with sunglasses.

“I knew it. He’s from SORE, all right.” The girl pushed the right edge of her loincloth to the side as she reached down and around to grab the gun stored in the holster attached to her inner thigh. “I’ve got no time to waste here.” She pulled the gun – a GLOCK 33 – out and raised it above her head before pointing it at the GTO. “Just gotta take this guy out…” The target on the screen inside her mask now rested on the man’s head. “…and things’ll be easier for me in the long run.”

After putting something in his pocket, the man inside the car prepared to get out… only to stop and look through his windshield at the girl. “Huh?”

The girl then fired. From the man’s perspective, the shot only appeared as a small flash in the distance, but in no time at all, the bullet fired burst through the windshield, shattering it and taking out a majority of the right side. Grunting in reaction, the man dodged to the left, but the bullet grazed his neck, causing a small blood splatter on the seat behind him. With glass lodged in the driver’s seat and blood staining the headrest, the man got up from where he landed following the dodge – the empty passenger’s seat – and looked out his windshield angrily. With a growl, he took his right hand off of his wounded neck and reached for the dashboard, grabbing a pistol and pointing it out the window. “What the hell!?”

The girl lowered her gun and scoffed as she started running toward the car, getting ahead of each of the man’s shots. Inside the car, the man kept firing, wasting bullet after bullet with each round he tried to deliver to the girl. He eventually ran out of bullets the moment she ran up to the still-closed driver’s side door and stopped, pulling the handle only to find it locked. Just in tune with the click of the man’s gun, signaling his lack of ammo.

“Huh?”

The girl raised her GLOCK 33 and flipped it so the barrel pointed upwards, only to pistol-whip the driver’s side window, shattering it completely. She tossed her gun into her other hand as she quickly reached inside the car, feeling around for the opening handle. After two off-target touches, she grabbed the handle and swung the door open, quickly pulling her hand back and bringing it to her gun before pointing it once more at the man.

The man growled once again, throwing his gun to the floor of the car and facing the girl. His neck wound appeared to be gone, though there was still a slight blood splatter on it... “You little _bitch_!!!” He pointed his right arm at the woman, his hand formed into a fist, and with a clench of that fist, his knuckles flipped open and four small barrels thrust out of the open, mechanical-sounding crevices, pointing right at the woman.

“Hn.” All the woman could do was smirk before shooting at the man once again.

The first bullet hit his hand, causing him to thrust it upward as he grunted in reaction. The second bullet hit his exposed wrist, throwing it back and to the side, roughly rubbing against the back of the second seat. The third bullet hit him right in the inner elbow, slamming his arm against the left side of the car as the rest of his body was thrown back in shock. “Gah!” Each hit produced a dull, metallic dinging sound.

The girl then reached for the headrest of the driver’s seat, which had a bullethole on the very edge in the middle of the splattered blood. She reached into the hole and pulled out the bullet, raising it up above her and squeezing either side with her thumb and index finger. The bullet transformed with a pop, into a compact spear in the shape of an arrowhead, with four evenly split edges and a hollow circular base, about half the size of someone’s hand. The girl then thrust the transformed bullet down onto the back end of the top of her GLOCK, pushing it forward along the indentation running the length of the firearm’s top, and then pushing it down into the barrel. She moved her hand back as she pointed the gun at the man once more…

…and fired. As a result, the man’s right arm was shot right out of the car, taking part of the passenger’s side door and a good other amount of the car’s exterior with it. The arm slammed against the wall the car was parked beside, breaking it in half at the elbow and revealing the mechanic insides of it. The light blue shock waves accompanying the detachment of the arm further supported its identity as a cybernetic limb.

The man took two heavy sighs before gritting his teeth, gripping the dashboard with his remaining hand and preparing to come at the woman…

“Ya-huh?”

…only to be interrupted by the barrel of the gun pressing against his head. He barely had time to react when the girl pulled the trigger once more, shooting him right through the head, with a blood splatter against the broken glass of what remained of his passenger’s side door.

The girl immediately put her gun back in the holster and then opened the left-most storage compartment on her right shoulder. From it, she took out a blue grenade with a long, rounded body, flat ends, and a heart in the middle with a timer in the middle of that heart. She pressed a button on one end of the grenade and tossed it into the car, landing near the man’s corpse.

After tossing the grenade, the girl stepped back some. “Now then…” She raised her right hand in a sort of stationary wave. “See ya!” The girl slammed the driver’s door shut and turned around, jumping into the air and out of sight.

As for the grenade, it remained in position between the man’s legs, a beep accompanying each second it counted down. 0:02… 0:01… 0:00. Once it hit that limit, it started beeping several times, and then…

…it went off. From its front seat, the GTO exploded into a cloud of red and white fire that blew the driver’s side door off it and into the wall of the alley, and engulfed the rest of it while blowing it high into the air. It wasn’t a second or two later, though, until the GTO came out of the blackening cloud of smoke roof-first. The car rotated mid-blast, landing on the driver’s door side and skidding down the narrow alleyway to the very edge, where it stopped just before exiting out into the street, or even the sidewalk alongside it.

Didn’t stop the passersby on that street and sidewalk from taking notice, though. Once the GTO reached the end of the alley, those walking by stopped to take notice, those on the sidewalk closest to it flinching back.

One bystander was a short man with a backwards cap on his head and a baggy sweatshirt. One of the two flinchers, he backed up a little more for emphasis. “What the hell was _that_!?” he proclaimed in his shrill voice.

Another bystander was a man in his 20s with short brown hair, and wore a tan T-shirt and blue jeans. He was the most prominent bystander and also the second flincher. He wasn’t as obviously shocked, but his eyes were open quite a bit and his mouth slightly open as well. “A bomb, maybe?”

An off-screen bystander called out next. “Don’t just stand there! Call the police!”

The young man looked back. “Right!” He nodded before running off.

The bystanders in the back – a bald and bored-looking salaryman with half-open eyes, a woman with wavy brown hair in a red dress with her hand over her open mouth in shock, her black-haired suited-up boyfriend leaning forward with squinted eyes and his hands in his pockets, and a few nondescript others – just stood back and silently reacted with quiet chatter in the background.

As the chatter continued amongst the bystanders below, the smoke resulting from the explosion rose into the air and started to dissipate once it breached the height of the office building the girl was running on earlier. And sure enough, behind a large air-conditioning unit situated on the roof, the girl stood and looked back at the damage she wrought. Her heart mask was no longer glowing.

She let out a quick, two-syllable snicker, smirking from behind her now-transparent mask and showing her teeth. “That’s _one_ down.” She turned back and pressed the blue stripe twirling around her left earphone device, her mask once again glowing.

The inside of her mask now displayed not what she saw in front of her, but a window that laid itself over it. In the lower left-hand corner of the window was the word “SORETRACKER” in English, and above it was a green-tinted map focusing on a square representing the office building the girl was standing on. On that square was a bright blue circle, and coming from it a speech bubble saying “私” or “Me”. The screen then zoomed out from where that bubble was, the focus now on the alley going from the main street on the far left to its unknown ending point offscreen. A few buildings down from the girl’s location, on the other side of the alley, were four closely-bunched yellow circles, each having a speech bubble that said “SOREA”.

“And how convenient!” she proclaimed joyfully. “His buddies aren’t too far away!” The girl smiled again with a content grunt, lowering her hand as she stepped away from the air conditioning unit. “Just what I’ve been waiting for.” She raised her arms above her head and stretched, grunting some before lowering them. “Here goes.” With that, she once again started to run along the edge of the office building, her arms behind her back just as before.

As the girl ran off, the POV panned upwards from the building to the skyline beyond it to the night sky. The sky started off as a faded dark blue with some darker clouds in the distance, but as the pan continued, the color transitioned into darker shades, until everything was once again pitch black.

**二倍無限大**   
**NIBAI MUGENDAI**

Once the title disappeared, things remained black for a second or two. And then, text started to appear, as if it was being typed on a laptop. A narration accompanied the text.

名古屋市, 2099年

**“Nagoya, Japan, 2099.”**

Cut to a JHP .45 ACP cartridge, full metal jacket design, being inserted into the top of a gun magazine.

悲惨な本州内戦から七十年, 日本は紛争の時代にあった。

**“Seventy years after the disastrous Honshu Civil War, Japan was in the midst of a conflicted age.”**

The magazine was then inserted into the bottom of a silver Springfield Armory XD.

技術的進歩と増加犯罪率の時代。

**“An age of significant technological advance and a national increase in crime.”**

The hand that inserted the magazine into the XD pulled back its barrel and cocked it.

それは初めじゃない, しかし背景だ。

**“It’s not exactly where it all began, but it makes for a nice setting.”**

The XD was then raised up to a steady level, pointing at something offscreen.

この背景では、人生は人のための驚くほど正常であった。

**“It wasn’t pretty either, but people then lived surprisingly peaceful, somewhat normal lives.”**

The XD shakily focused on the bullseye of a white target, against a white wall. After a few seconds, the shakiness stopped.

俺のような人。

**“People like me.”**

The index finger of the hand tapped the trigger, about to pull it…

藤島鷹死。

**“Takashi Fujishima.”**

…and when it did, the XD fired all 13 rounds in succession. After each shot, the gun tilted upwards only to quickly shift back down before firing the next shot. By the time all the shots were fired, the empty magazine fell from the bottom of the XD’s handle, and the XD itself was slightly lowered, tilting away from the target. At first glance, it appeared that no holes were made in the target sheet. After a second, though, the wall behind the target turned from white to black, revealing the holes made in the sheet by the bullets. All 13 shots fired within the bullseye, one of them actually hitting it dead-on.

The person who fired the gun grinned, letting out a good-hearted snicker from between his teeth as he raised his right hand – also his free hand – in the air and clenched it into a fist of victory, bringing it back down swiftly as he clenched it tight. “Hell yeah! Got ‘em all near bullseye _again_!”

This person was Takashi Fujishima. He had messy brown hair that formed a partial spike up top, deep red eyes, and a slim, slightly athletic build. He wore a brown shirt with a white stripe going down each sleeve, plus some blue jeans.

After his little celebratory exclamation, Takashi turned around and looked up at the clock on the dull white wall behind him. It was digital, black on a greenish-gray background. Displayed in military time, it read 21:53. Or 9:53 P.M.

“Geez, it’s _that_ late already?” He lightly shrugged, grinning some. “Hm. Well, I _could_ go for another round…” he mused as he rolled his eyes and looked off to the left. He turned around, b­ringing his right hand to his chin as he let his elbow rest on his gun and tapped his foot against the floor. “ _But_ I’d hate to waste all my ammo. I guess I could quit for today.” Takashi walked a few steps, close to the range he was firing in, and bent down. With his right hand, he picked up a dark blue duffel bag, the contents making muted clicking sounds. Once he was upright, he then stashed the XD in his jeans pocket. After slinging the duffel bag over his left shoulder, he turned and walked to a single black, knobless door at the end, the wall to his left and the firing ranges to the right. The door slid open, and he walked out into the night.

**track01: ベギニング**   
**track01: BEGINNING**

Following the sounds of coins being inserted into a slot, the setting switched from the title screen to a vending machine. The machine was red in color and had a viewing window with several kinds of beer on display. Beside the window were a list of choices, with circular buttons to the left and price listings to the right. The hand of the person standing in front of the machine at that time pressed the top button, beside the label “ASAHI DRAFT” and the price “¥2000”. A can of beer dropped down into the dispenser below the list of brands. The person in front of the machine, Takashi, squatted down and swiped the can out of the dispenser with a single swing of his right hand. The beer can was white with gold trimmings around the top, bottom, and logo, which was simply “ASAHI DRAFT” in blocky letters. After pulling the tab, Takashi brought the can up to his lips and took a drink. He was leaning against the wall of a nearby building, beside the sole vending machine within the immediate vicinity. The drink he took lasted about three seconds, and when he was done, he pulled the can away from his mouth and let out a huge, refreshed sigh. “Ahh… Damn, that stuff’s good…” He returned to drinking from the can, tilting his head back as he did.

“Out late drinking again, I see.”

“Eh?” Takashi lowered his can as he leaned forward.

Standing on the other side of the vending machine was another man, who looked to be a number of years older than Takashi, albeit shorter by an inch or two. He had short brown hair (with bangs) that went down to the top of his neck, glasses, and a build less athletic than Takashi’s but still fairly lithe. He wore an unbuttoned blue jacket with a white T-shirt underneath, as well as blue jeans and standard sneakers.

After a second of looking at him, Takashi leaned back and closed his eyes as if he didn’t care. “Ah, what’s it to you, Hikari?” He took another drink.

The other man, Hikari, smiled at Takashi, stepping forward a bit. “Oh, nothing. Just checking up on you, that’s all.”

Takashi sighed. “You _still_ doin’ that?” He stepped forward and faced Hikari. “I’m kinda old for that shit, y’know.”

Hikari shrugged, one hand on the vending machine. “Hey, it’s my job. So, what brings you out here?”

“Nothin’ much, just firing practice,” Takashi responded as he tilted his head back some, looking off to the side. “My aim’s improved, so that’s somethin’.” He took yet another drink.

“It’s ‘somethin’.” Hikari glanced off to the side smugly. “If only you put as much effort into socializing as you do into firing practice…”

As Hikari finished his sentence, Takashi spat out some of his beer in shock before looking up at him. “Hey, what’s _that_ supposed to mean!?”

Hikari looked back and blinked once, surprised but not startled or angered by Takashi’s outburst.

Takashi switched his beer over to his left hand and pointed at Hikari with his now-empty right. “For the record, I talk with Tomoki and Domyoji _plenty_! They’re my roommates, after all.” He switched his beer back into his right hand and drank from it again.

Hikari nodded, some sweatdrops running down the side of his head. “I understand Arashokou, but Kumagai…” He opened his eyes and glanced to the left. “I wouldn’t call arguing with him and stealing from him ‘talking’.”

Takashi lowered the can again and groans. “The only thing I ‘steal’ from him is _my_ money, which he takes and blows on cheap hentai!” He scratched the back of his head. “Besides, what’s my personal life matter to you?”

“Like I said, I’m just looking out for you, that’s all.”

“Yeah, well you’re being a little too close for comfort about it.” Takashi walked forward, patting Hikari on the shoulder. “You’re the university’s dean, not my babysitter. I can take care of myself now.” He took his hand off and continued walking. “So if you’re gonna look out for me, do it from your office.”

Hikari grinned some with slight nervousness at Takashi as he walked off. “Can do, Fujishima.”

As Hikari walked away from him, Takashi continued on in the opposite direction. He chugged the rest of his beer in just two seconds, sighing as he finished. He crushed the can in his right hand, lowering his arm as he approached a building. The building in question was a wide white building with large windows running across the front entrance, in-between and above the four equally transparent sliding doors. Windows also lined the second floor and above, which stuck out further than the entrance. Below the lowest set of those windows was the sign for the building, labeled “新名古屋大学大寮舎” or “Shin Nagoya University Dai Residence Hall” in big, black characters. Once he turned to enter the building via the second pair of sliding doors, Takashi stretched his arm out, the beer can hovering over a black recycling bin between that pair of doors and the next one. Once the doors opened, he dropped the can into the bin.

Once inside, Takashi pressed a button with an upwards arrow plastered on it. As expected, it was next to an elevator door. Once the doors opened for Takashi, he stepped forward, leaving the adjacent dormitory hallway – with black tiled floors, faded white walls housing sliding doors separated from each other in an odd-patterned fashion, and dim fluorescent lighting from the dropped ceiling tiles – behind him and entering the elevator, visible through a transparent post of glass. Once in the elevator, he pressed one of a number of buttons on the panel to the right: 19. The elevator went up, moving past several stories in the background. Takashi rested against the bar attached to the windowed wall opposite the door, his hands gripping the steel bar on either side as he looked down. After a few seconds of silence, he let out a short sigh, which itself was followed by the elevator coming to a halt and a ding signaling its arrival at floor 19.

Once out of the elevator, Takashi walked down the adjacent hallway, with much more doors on either side of him. The walls and ceiling were the same, though the hallway was a deep-purple carpet as opposed to black tile. Takashi walked past several white sliding doors, each adorned with a black, assumingly stamped-on number until he stopped in front of one in particular: #1984. Once there, he took a black flash drive and inserted it into a USB port-shaped slot below a number pad to the right of the door. Once the drive was in, Takashi punched a code into the keypad. 6-1-2-3-1-2, topped off with a press of the green-texted “OK” button to the left of the 0. (To the right was a red-texted “CANCEL” button.) The door then opened, with Takashi standing in the doorway and looking inside.

“Hey, I’m back.”

“Hm?” Lying on a futon in what appeared to be a bed area connected to the wall (or rather, a long window running across its length) was another young man, who looked to be around Takashi’s age, only a little younger. His hair was a lighter brown than Takashi’s, not to mention an inch longer in both bangs and back length, and was also messy. He also had maroon eyes and a more noticeable upper lip, and was wearing shiny grey headphones with a black circle in the middle of each earspeaker. As he tilted his head toward the door, his mouth laid partially open, showing his teeth some. After taking that initial look, though, he smiled wide, sitting up some more with his right arm acting as support, his free hand pulling down his headphones to around his neck as he looked at the door. “Hey, welcome back, Taka-san!”

This room was Takashi and his as-of-yet-unidentified roommate’s dorm room. It was larger than a standard dorm, in both width and depth, and had plenty of differences to boot. The walls were white, brighter than those of the hall outside. As for the ceiling, it didn’t have any dropped tiles, so the structural ceiling, painted black like the tubes and ductwork running across the top, was exposed. Three fluorescent lamps hanging from the ceiling by steel-reinforced wiring lit up the room. The left side of the room (from Takashi’s perspective) was occupied by a number of different appliances and furniture. From what could be seen at the moment, the closest item to the door was a round table with three chairs surrounding it, one of them not pushed in all the way. It was part of the dorm room’s kitchen, situated in the corner and characterized by the counter along the wall, the cabinets above them, and the brown tile floor that contrasted the carpet of the rest of the room, which matched that of the hallway. A small trash bin peeked out from its cramped position between the edge of the counter running along the left wall and a minifridge. Next to the minifridge was a school desk, the chair also pulled out slightly and the desk itself home to a stack of various tablets and a rusty red toolbox with two handles sticking up. Beside the desk was a shelf, home to what appeared to be numerous DVDs and CDs. In comparison, the right side of the room was nondescript, with only a brown two-seater couch opposite the bookshelf and desk, and a sliding door to what was presumably the bathroom. Against the back wall was a built-in, three-level bunk bed with a low-hanging shelf surrounding each one from the left and right at each level and the back at the bottom level, a window spanning the width of the room against the back of the middle and top bunks, and a ladder to the immediate right of the left-most shelf, stopping at the top bunk. The top and bottom bunks were nearly bare, the latter one having an alarm clock on its left shelf. The middle one was occupied by the roommate, lying on his side with his headphones plugged into a CD player that laid in front of him.

“So, how’d firing practice go?”

Takashi walked over to the back of the room, slightly veering to the right to avoid the pulled-out chair before heading back on track. “Eh, same as usual.” He took his duffel bag off his shoulder as he turned towards the desk. “What’s it to you anyways, Tomoki?” He set the bag down.

The roommate, Tomoki, grinned. “Oh, nothing much, just curious about your progress, that’s all.”

Takashi pushed in the desk chair, and then kicked the end of the bag, sliding it between the chair’s legs until it stopped under the desk. “Hm. Figured as much.” He walked away from the desk and over to the bed, squatting down in front of it. “So, haven’t seen Domyoji around. He out again?”

“Yeah. Those night classes he’s taking are really pushin’ his limits.”

As Tomoki spoke, Takashi pulled out a drawer below the bottom bunk of the bed. Inside the small drawer, which was on the far right side of his bed, were a pair of car keys, the key fob bearing the Toyota logo, and an cigarette carton that was wide open. The carton was empty. Takashi grunted in mild frustration as he closed the drawer.

“Not to say he’s got one _tonight_ , though,” Tomoki continued. “He’s just stayin’ to finish up some homework. Now I know what you’re thinkin’, why doesn’t he just do it later?”

Takashi, meanwhile, moved down to another drawer and pulled _it_ out. Inside this equally small drawer were three ¥500 coins, and nothing else. Takashi groaned under his breath in rising frustration, his right eye twitching. Without bothering to close the drawer, he stood up straight, his head down and the aura around his eyes fairly dark, and stepped forward.

“Well, Domyoji’s kind of a procrastinator, so he’s tryin’ to fix that by getting his work done _now_ so he won’t have any for the weekend.”

Takashi remained silent, looking down at Tomoki’s futon…

“And you _know_ how much he loves the wee–”

…and then Takashi lunged his right hand forward, digging it under Tomoki’s futon.

“Gah!” Tomoki jumped up, scooting back as Takashi continued to rummage and leaning forward. “What the hell, Taka-san!? I was sitting there!” He moved back, his eyes narrowing as a displeased grimace appeared on his face. “Seriously, man, don’t scare me like that. I thought you were gonna kill me…”

Takashi moved his hand out of Tomoki’s futon after a few seconds of rummaging, looking down at what he pulled out: eight ¥1000 bills, crumpled up by his grip. “Hn. You never change, do you?” Takashi asked as he gripped the bills again and turned to Tomoki.

Tomoki’s eyes widened and his mouth opened up a bit in fear as Takashi turned to him. “Taka-san…” He closed his eyes and nervously smiled, putting up his hands. “Look, I can explain, I was just–”

“Dammit, Tomoki!”

Tomoki flinched at Takashi’s sudden scream, letting out a surprised, muted squeal through his teeth.

Takashi held up the bills for Tomoki. “I told you _several_ times already _not_ to take my cash!” He shook his hand to further emphasize the already-emphasized words, and then gave Tomoki a crooked look. “You got a death wish or somethin’?”

Tomoki put his hands up and innocently gestured with them. “Hey, you know how it is! I’m broke as hell, and the dean gives you more money than you actually use…” He nervously smiled again. “So what’s the harm in me–”

“How much did you take?”

Tomoki frowned. “12,000 yen.”

“And for what?”

Tomoki sighed, reaching to the left and grabbing something. He held it up. It was a CD case, and on the cover was a girl in her late teens laying on a white bedsheet at an angle. She had long black hair flowing behind her with a headband bearing a ribbon on top, gold-colored eyes looking directly at the viewer, and barely any clothes on; just an unbuttoned school blouse and a dark blue plaid skirt pulled down to her knees, exposing her silky pink bra and panties. Her hands were around her knees, going down to her partially-offscreen bare shins and feet, and her slightly open-at-the-end smile showed a hint of seduction. The text below her said “染桐咲 -物語の始まり-” or “Saki Somegiri –Beginning of a Story–”, in a thin, glow-around-the-edges font.

“A hentai CD.”

“You stole all that for audio porn?” Takashi closed his eyes and looked down. “Unbelievable.” He turned around, stashing the money in his right pocket.

“Hey, look on the bright side!” Tomoki leaned out of his bed partially and looked at Takashi as he walked back over to the desk. “That CD only cost me 4,000, so there was _plenty_ leftover!”

“And were you gonna give it back?” Takashi asked as he squatted down by the desk, reaching under it and pulling out his duffel bag. Once it was out, he unzipped it and took out two cartridges.

“Of course I was. Would I ever lie to you, Taka-san?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Takashi responded as he took the cartridges and stuffed them in the same pocket as his money. He stood up and walked back towards the door. “Welp, I’m headin’ out again. Gotta stock up on some smokes.”

“ _More_ cigarettes?” Tomoki looked at Takashi as he walked away from him, his hands behind his head and his legs stretched out. “Those things are bound to kill ya with as much as _you_ smoke, Taka-san. That and they smell horrible.”

Takashi stopped just before the door and turned back to face Tomoki, his hands in his pockets. “Hey, you’ve dealt with it for the past few months, haven’t ya? So don’t complain.” He tilted his head down some, eyes closed and smiling. “Oh, and while I’m gone…” He opened his eyes, tilting his head up some as he does. “Don’t go stealin’ any more of my stuff.”

Tomoki sits up, glaring at Takashi. “And what if I do?”

“Simple.” Takashi shifts positions as he talks so his right side is facing the door rather than the left, and quickly pulls his gun out of his left pocket. “I’ll kill ya.” He pulled the trigger, only for it to produce a simple click.

It was enough to scare the shit out of Tomoki though, his narrowed eyes turning wide and his unamused expression turning fearful. He let out a loud, longer-than-the-norm yelp as he backed up, jerking himself to the right. By the end of his frantic move away, he was backed up against the windowed wall beside his bed, his hands over his head as he trembled in fear.

Takashi turned around and put his gun back in his pocket. “Relax, I’m only kidding.”

Tomoki leaned forward, angrier than before. “That wasn’t funny, Taka-san!”

Takashi pressed a button on the wall perpendicular to the door’s left side, and it slid open. “Look, if you wanna borrow my money for somethin’, just ask next time.”

“You’re just gonna say no anyways!”

Takashi smirks as he walks out of the room and back into the hallway. “Then lie about why you need it. Shouldn’t be _that_ hard.” He chuckled to himself as he left.

Tomoki grumbled under his breath in frustration before raising his head up and yelling at the top of his lungs. “I hope you die out there, Taka-san!!” After that, the door slid shut, and Takashi was gone from sight.

********

The night sky over the skyline of Nagoya was still the same faded blue as before, though the dark clouds from afar were closer, albeit bearing more distance from one another than before. As for the skyline, various buildings that made up its composition, most notably the Midland Square Tower and the JR Central Towers, were illuminated by the lights from inside, giving the buildings some form beyond their dark-shaded exteriors, which would camouflage in the night scenery were there no lights at all. The smaller buildings didn’t have as many lights on as Midland Square or the JR Towers, but a few did. Over this shot of the city at night, the quiet sounds of various urban doings, from driving cars to walking on the street, could be heard. A few horns could be spotted amidst the noise.

The most notable sound of all, however, was the isolated sigh of a middle-aged man. “How long have we been waiting here again?” That man then flicked his lighter, producing a flame which he used to light the cigarette in his mouth.

Another man, younger and deeper-voiced, grunted in response. “Hrm. Don’t ask me.”

“Alright, I won’t,” the man responded around his cigarette as he lowered his lighter, closing it and stuffing it in his pocket.

The middle-aged man stood on the rooftop of one of the shorter buildings in the Nagoya skyline, with three other men. They all dressed the same: black suit with pants, black tie over their white undershirts, and sunglasses. However, the four shared subtle differences. The first man, the smoking middle-aged man, had a balding hairline, and what was left of it was short and grey, and messy too. His left hand stashed his lighter away, while the other held a Minebea PM-9 by the primary handle. The second man, standing beside the first, was slightly more heavy-set, with black hair fashioned into a buzzcut. He also had a PM-9 in his hand, but was in his left. His right arm seemed to be replaced with a large, bulky mechanical arm with three claws at the end. The third man appeared to be the youngest of the group, with brown hair and bangs, and a nice-looking appearance. He had no gun on him, and had both hands in his pockets. The fourth and last man was also heavyset, but had more muscle than the second man. He was bald and had some facial hair, but it was less a full mustache and beard and more spotty, like he was trying to look tough. He too had a PM-9, his right hand on the primary handle and his left on the foregrip.

As the first man brought his hand back to his cigarette to take it out and exhale the smoke, the young man stepped forward. “Look, how long we’ve waited doesn’t matter. As long as Nakagumo shows up as planned, we shouldn’t have any problem.”

The first man put the cig back in his mouth just as the man with the mechanical arm, the one who replied to the first man earlier, spoke up. “Yeah, but what if he doesn’t?”

“Then we go on without him,” the young man replied, looking down and smirking. “But I doubt that would happen. After all, he has the codes we need to enhance the aerial lift point’s directional accuracy. Without _him_ , our asses might as well be grass.”

“Yeah, you said it!” the cigarette-smoking man chimed in.

As the men continued to talk, someone listened to them from behind an air conditioning unit on the roof, just several meters from where they stood. The person poked their head out to take a look, their face concealed by a transparent yet well-hiding green heart. It was the girl from before. She looked at the men as they talked, and with a press of a button on one of her earphones, her heart mask glowed a bright green, just as it did before.

The four men faced away from her, so she could only see their backs. On the screen inside her mask, there were now four computerized targets, each with a pop-open window extending from which scanned each man. “Alright, so there’s four of them. Three are armed…” As she spoke, the PM-9s of three of the men were highlighted in red, and a pop-up window in the lower right-hand corner displayed the text “3 ARMED”, not a second later, the text “1 IMPLANTED” popped up below it, accompanied by the highlighting of the buzzcut man’s robotic arm. “…and at least one has an R-NA implant.” She turns back, pressing the button on her earphone and switching off the glow on her mask, while her left hand crossed over and reached toward her right thigh. “Can’t tell what the one guy’s deal is; his implant must be hidden away or something.” After a second-long silence, she tilts her head up some. “Ah, forget it. It’ll be a quick job either ways.” She looked back down, pulling her GLOCK out of the holster on her thigh, pointing it up as she glanced down in what, judging from the angled-down eyebrows above the eye visible through her mask, appeared to be determination. “Now then, let’s do this.” She swiftly turned around, pressing her earphone again as she prepared to emerge from behind the unit, her gun in her hand.

********

Elsewhere, someone slammed something down on a counter. That someone was Takashi, and that something was a stack of bills: the crumpled ¥1000 banknotes.

“Carton of Wild Sevens, please.”

The clerk on the other side of the counter grunted. “Hmm. Gonna need some ID.”

“Sure,” Takashi replied as he held up a small, thin rod in his hand, nestled between his index and middle fingers with his thumb hovering over a button on the side. He pressed the button, and a holographic display popped out of the rod, emulating a driver’s license. The right of the display was taken up by a portrait of Takashi from the neck up, with a little bit of his uppermost torso in view. He looked just the same as he usually did, with his messy brown hair and a blank scowl on his face. To the left was a bunch of textual information, the following being the most readable:

氏名 藤島鷹死 | 2079年12月15日生  
住所 愛知県名古屋市北区新名古屋大学大寮舎1984間  
交付2096年7月27日  
2099年7月27日まで有効

NAME: Takashi Fujishima | BORN: December 15, 2079  
ADDRESS: Shin Nagoya University Dorm Dai Apt. 1984, Kita Ward, Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture  
DATE OF ISSUE: July 27, 2096  
EXPIRATION DATE: July 27, 2099

“Alright,” the clerk responded.

The clerk then set down a carton of cigarettes, colored with a red gradient that slowly transitioned to white as it went across the box. On the lid it read, in English, “WILD SEVEN”, with the phrases “ORIGINAL” and “CHARCOAL FILTER” below it. Next to the text was a logo, a backwards S intercepted by a double-pointed teardrop positioned at a tilt. On the side was the same text and logo as the lid, only upside-down.

As for elsewhere, it was a convenience store. It looked fairly small and rather cramped, like most Japanese convenience stores, and brightly lit too. The counter where Takashi stood had a register on its left side, the back hidden by an ad for what appeared to be a soft drink in a green bottle. To the right was a display case, with various buns lined up on the grill-patterned shelves. Behind the counter and the clerk standing behind it himself was another counter, with a microwave, sink, and a number of stacked-up magazines behind it, though to the left was a shelf lined up with a number of goods; mostly square packs and cartons of various cigarette brands and more rectangular containers of a brighter, pinker design…

The clerk, a non-descript man of middle age, balding with a bit of weight on him, some spotty facial hair, and a blue cashier’s T-shirt on, looked at Takashi as his hand remained on the carton. “Anything else?”

“Nope, that’s it.”

The clerk grunted in response, slightly nodding as he pushed the carton into a plastic bag he held open in his right hand. “That’ll be 7,000.”

“Heeere you go,” Takashi said, pushing the bills closer to the clerk before pulling one of the eight back.

The clerk took the bills in one hand, handing him the bag with the other. “Thank you. Have a nice evening.”

Takashi nodded as he took the bag. “Sure thing.”

Not a few seconds later, Takashi made his way out of the convenience store. The sliding doors closed behind him as he held the plastic bag with his recent purchase in his left hand. “Welp, that takes care of that.” In his right hand, he held the remaining ¥1000 note, staring at it with strained eyes. “Hm… I should probably spend this before Tomoki thinks about takin’ it.” He lightly clenched the bill in his hand and lowered it as he looked around. “Let’s see here…”

Not a minute later, Takashi found himself at a nearby vending machine, sliding the remaining note into the slot. Much like the vending machine over near his campus, it was red and stocked with various beers. Takashi stood before the machine, his hand on his chin as he inspected the unseen list of choices.

“Tried it. Too expensive. Tried it.” He nodded with each sentence. For the next one, though, he did not. His eyes just merely widened as he let out a curious hum. “Hm…” The selection his eyes laid on was called BRONZE★STAR, the textual portions of the logo written in a blocky font. The price listing was exactly ¥1000. “Never tried _that_ one before.” Takashi grinned. “Guess I’ll give it a shot.” He reached out and pressed the corresponding button. From inside the machine, the beer dropped out into the dispenser, making its impact…

********

“Hold it right there!”

…back on the roof, the girl came out from behind her hiding spot and pointed her gun at the four men. Just as she spoke, the four men turned and looked back at her, all but the one with the spotty facial hair grunting in curiosity. “Hn?”

After a short period of silence, the buzzcut man spoke. “Who the hell are you?”

“Whoever she is, she ain’t Nakagumo,” the middle-aged man responded as he turned around to face the girl.

“Nakagumo?” the girl questioned, tilting her head back some. “Is he your friend?”

“More or less,” the young man spoke as he stepped forward, pushing his way past the middle-aged and buzzcut men.

“Hey…” the middle-aged man grunted.

The young man stopped and resumed speaking. “But why would _you_ care? Did you do something to him?” He got angrier as he went on.

“Hm.” The girl smirked. “I’m sorry to say this…” She brought her head back down as she looked at them through her lit-up mask. “…but I killed him.”

The reactions amongst the men were varied, and yet the same. The buzzcut man flinched a bit in anger, his eye twitching as he gritted his teeth. “What!?”

The young man clenched his fists as his face grew angrier and his posture tightened in aggression. “He’s dead!?”

The man with the facial hair popped out from his position and shouted out to her with a growl. “Rr… You don’t _sound_ sorry!”

The middle-aged man’s reaction, though, was the most immediate of all. With an angered grunt and a twitch of his eye, allowing a vein on the side of his head to surface, he raised his head, and with it, his PM-9. “You _bitch_!” He got into position, spreading his legs out as he swiftly pointed his PM-9 at the girl. “You’re gonna _pay_ for taking Commander Nakagumo’s life, you hear!?”

“So he was your commander, huh?” The girl grins, chuckling some as she takes her left hand off her gun, letting it hang by her side as she kept pointing it at the men. “In that case, killing you four should be no problem at all.”

The facial-hair man backed-up in preparation as he too raised his PM-9. The buzzcut man did the same, raising his PM-9 with one hand and opening up the claws on his mechanical arm as if he was opening up an actual hand. The young man stood his ground, grunting some in anger as his eyes narrowed behind his sunglasses. The middle-aged man, however, waited until the girl finished speaking to give his response.

“Don’t get too cocky, bitch!” He rushed forward and gripped the handles of his PM-9, his finger about to pull the trigger.

“Heh.” With a grin, the girl pulled her own trigger.

********

“Blecch!” Takashi exclaimed as he removed the can of beer he recently purchased from his mouth, his tongue flopping out slightly as tiny droplets of beer sprayed out and floated through the air. “Fuck!” He looked down at the can in disgust. “This beer tastes like shit!” He narrowed his open eyes, quietly growling under his breath. “No wonder it was so damn cheap…” With a grunt that came off as more of a sigh, he reached out and set the can down atop a closed electrical box situated against a concrete wall. “Guess there’s no point in holdin’ onto it. Let someone else take it and see what _they_ think…”

As for the beer can itself, it was adorned with the BRONZE★STAR logo against a creamy white background, and below it was the text “アルコール度数70%” or “70% Alcohol by Volume”. Some beads of sweat were visible on the outside of the can, one of them sliding down after being left alone for those few seconds.

After setting the can down, Takashi walked away from the convenience store and along the road back to campus. The street and sidewalks running alongside it were fairly barren, as no cars were running and only a few pedestrians were out and about, mostly businessmen and the occasional drunk, drowsily sauntering in the opposite direction. The sound of chatter and the occasional rustling quietly filled the background as Takashi made his way through calmly, holding a firm grip on his bag. His looked forward for a few seconds, but after a while, he stopped and turned his head to the side.

“Hm?”

To his left was a familiar sight, albeit not to him specifically: the narrow alleyway. The GTO, lying on its roof with broken windows, the windshield cracked and splattered with blood, blocked the entrance to the alley. The right corner of the rear bumper was smashed against the wall of the building to Takashi’s left, and the left corner of the front bumper left only a little wiggle room for someone to enter. Not that they would, as the entrance was closed off with yellow police tape, bearing the phrase “立入禁止 KEEP OUT” in repetition. Oddly enough, there were no police cars, or even cops, to be found, both at the entrance to and down inside the alley. Not a single red or blue light, just the flickering whites lining the walls of the buildings closing in on the passage.

Takashi looked at the display with curious eyes and a disappointed pout, emitting an annoyed sigh after a second of silence. “The hell is this?” He turned the rest of his body to face the alley, looking down at the GTO. “The cops here can’t even be bothered to keep watch over this sorta thing?” He sighed again. “Geez, this city’s really goin’ to shit, ain’t it… Still, can’t help but wonder who pulled this off.”

As some leftover smoke from the wreckage floated into the air, dissipating just as quickly as it rose, a distant gunshot was heard, followed by the sound of several shots in succession. Takashi silently gasped as he looked up and down the alley. The few pedestrians out weren’t paying as much attention as Takashi did to the sounds of gunfire, a single shot occasionally mixed in with the more muted rapid-fire, though one or two looked over as they passed by.

After a few seconds of listening, Takashi shrugged. “Ah, what the hell? I’ve got nothin’ better to do.” Takashi moved over to the right edge of the police tape and yanked it away.

********

And just as he pulled, the setting switched back to the roof. The middle-aged man was firing his PM-9 at the girl, stepping back as he fired a few rounds at a time. “Dammit!” He fired a couple more at the girl. “Quit moving around so much!”

In reaction to the shots, the girl dodged them almost effortlessly, quickly hopping to the side and rushing forward to dodge the next hail of bullets directed toward her. She giggled some, almost sinisterly, as the man stopped firing. “Sorry, can’t do that! It’s _your_ fault for using such a crappy gun!” As she spoke, she dodged the next hail with another hop and rush.

The man grunted as he stopped firing, grabbing a cartridge from one of his pockets and pushing it into the bottom of the primary handle. “Oh yeah? You call _this_ crappy!?” he shouted as he pointed his reloaded PM-9 at the girl, now facing him. He pulled the trigger and fired, but the girl jumped up to avoid the initial shot. The man growled under his breath and with an extra grunt, he raised the gun upwards and continued to fire. The girl just continued to dodge, swaying to the right in midair once the line of fire shifted towards her, and then around it to the left as it kept up. She dodged to the right again a second later, each dodge bringing her closer to ground. It was her second dodge around to the left that brought her to ground level. One foot landed on the roof with a small tap, while her other leg swung around, roundhouse-kicking the gun out of the man’s hands. She let out a small shout as she finished her kick, her right leg pointed upwards and the PM-9 spinning as it flew up into the air. The man was speechless, emitting a gasping whine of disbelief as his open jaw shook. He gritted his teeth and growled again, leaning forward in anger. “You little–!” But then he stopped, wincing as his eyes and cheeks puffed up in reaction to some sort of impact. An impact immediately followed by an open mouth and a splash of blood coming from it. “Gah!”

The girl’s gun was pointed right at the man’s chest, the barrel pressed tight against the skin. She stood still with a lowered head, the man’s blood landing on her glove. “You shouldn’t get so distracted.” She raised her head, her eye barely visible behind her glowing mask. “Now then, apologize for this mess.” Meaning the one on her glove.

The man growled once more, blood running down his gritted teeth in a lesser quantity than down his chin. “Neve–!” He was once again interrupted, this time by several more shots to the chest. He grunted for each of the five shots, stepping back as each one caused more blood to come out of his chest, and a little more out of his mouth. After the fifth shot, he fell backwards onto the ground, the last grunt morphing into a tired, dying gasp.

The girl stood over him, her gun’s barrel smoking. “Too bad, I would’ve just killed you anyway-hm?” She turned her head in response to the loud scream of fury that suddenly erupted in the middle of her comment.

The screamer in question was the second of the four men; the one with the spotty facial hair. Letting out another scream, he rushed at her with his own PM-9 in one hand, his right one balled into a fist that he prepared to throw at her. Just as he punched, though, the girl quickly dodged, giggling some as she turned to face this man, scowling in anger.

“You aren’t getting away that easily, bitch!” The man turned his body and rushed at the girl, pointing his PM-9 at her with both hands.

The girl just grinned again, pleasantly grunting as she pointed her gun upwards and rushed at the man in turn.

Down in the alley below, Takashi came to a stop after an assumed long run down the alley. His black sneakers skidded across the asphalt ground as he stopped, and as they did, he looked up at the building, sighing some through his teeth. At closer inspection, the building was two stories tall and had exterior walls tinted blue by a built-in overhead street lamp. A few trash cans were lined up against the wall and underneath the lamp, as were a couple of cardboard boxes. The successive gunshots from the second man’s PM-9 were faint but audible. As he looked up, Takashi gave a confident grunt. “Heh. Found it.”

Back on the roof, the battle had reached a standstill; the man and the girl clashing firearms, the PM-9 and GLOCK pushing against one another like swords. The man tried to tilt his gun, still smoking from the previous couple shots, to the left just enough to shoot the girl, grunting through his clenched teeth in frustration. The unharmed girl, on the other hand, held her gun steady as the other’s twitches failed to push it aside. She had it pointed at his chest, her finger just as firm against the trigger in spite of the two barely touching. Seconds passed, the quiet rattle of both firearms persisting in this physical stalemate. Until, after emitting another strained grunt…

“Ah, screw it!”

…the man pulled his gun away and raised it above his head, about to thrust down and fire as he let out a furious yell. A yell which was immediately cut short when the girl, just as suddenly as the man, pulled the trigger and shot the man in the chest. Blood splattered from the man’s wound and onto his suit, while the man himself breathily grunted, stepping back in reaction. His right hand moved away from the foregrip of his PM-9, whilst the left kept a tight grip on the primary handle.

The girl lowered her own gun and rushed forward to the man’s left, suddenly stopping once she was next to him. As the man turned his head to her, she raised her left leg and slammed it into his side, kicking him back against the roof’s built-up wall. Upon impact, he grunted once again, keeping his teeth clenched as his arms hung back over the wall. Before he had time to recover, the girl again rushed at him. Growling under his breath, he raised his left arm in a last-ditch effort to fire at her, only to once again be halted. This time, by the girl’s own hand. Her right hand gripped his forearm and pushed it back, his gun tilting downward along with his hand. “Rrgh! You little…” In spite of his disadvantage, the man’s finger pressed against the trigger as he fought against the girl’s grip. But she pushed back, causing him to yell and pull the trigger.

From there, time slowed down. At least, the visual perception of time did, accompanied by the emergence of a black-backgrounded, white-outlined sketchy visual style. Instead of a barrage of bullets coming out at once, one bullet emerged from the PM-9’s barrel, jerking downwards at the pull. Even there, in the blink of an eye, the bullet made its impact.

In the alley, Takashi, also subject to the slowed time and sketchy art style, stood in the same position as before, looking upwards and squinting. That expression disappeared in an instant as the bullet from above came down and pierced his shoulder. His eyes were wide, his mouth was partially open, and red, equally sketchy blood sprayed out from both sides of the wound, where his right arm met his torso.

And then time resumed, the art style returning to normal. The bullets from the PM-9 now came down at continuous full force, all hitting at or around the same spot as the first on Takashi’s shoulder. “Aurrrgh!” Takashi screamed out, grunting several times as each bullet pushed him back against the alley wall, blood flying out from each impact. Some landed on the wall, some landed on the ground, and some landed on Takashi himself. Eventually, the bullets stopped, leaving Takashi standing, but not for long. He slumped down into a sitting position, his back sliding against the wall. His right arm fell limp as he collapsed, and once his collapse finished, it fell off.

Meanwhile, on the roof, the man pulled his trigger again, only to hear a click. With a grunt, he jerked his hand forward and threw the gun at the girl. The girl grunted some as well, pulling back and dodging the gun. Which gave the man the perfect opportunity to stand up and rush her. She jumped back in response to his charge, characterized by a quick shout of fury as he prepared to throw another punch.

Back in the alley, Takashi remained in the position he collapsed into, his disembodied arm lying beside him as a small pool of blood collected around the portion covered by his equally disembodied shirt sleeve.

“Dammit…” Takashi growled in a slightly raspier tone. He sighed in exasperation numerous times as he gripped his freshly formed arm stump, blood soaking into his shirt and pouring onto the ground through his fingers. “I just _had_ to rush in and get myself shot, didn’t I?” Only one exasperated sigh followed this time. “I swear, stupid shit like this is past me.” He looked up a little as he spoke, turning his head up all the way at the end. And then he grinned, chuckling through his lightly clenched teeth as the streetlight above the alleyway gave his form a blue tint like it did the rest of the passage. “Not that it matters. But still… the hell’s goin’ on up there…”

As Takashi and his words drifted off, the POV panned upwards, past his body and up to the roof. The fight taking place was not visible from neither Takashi nor the pan’s perspectives, but it continued on.

The man threw up his right arm to defend himself from a side-kick delivered by the girl, wincing from her leg’s impact against his arm as he let out a soft grunt. In turn, he threw a punch at the girl, her legs spread apart as she stood on the roof, only for her to grab his fist and grip it tight. A second later, with no visible expression from behind her mask, she raised her gun one-handed and shot at the man. The bullet hit him in his left shoulder, a splash of blood coming from the hole of impact. He grunted as he was forced back, his left arm quickly limping as his right hand forced its way out of the girl’s left.

And then, he heard quick footsteps. Fast footsteps. He gasped lightly as he heard them, turning his head to the side. “What the-oomph!”

He was kicked in the face. The girl’s shin pressed against his cheek as she posed in midair, her left leg tucked in and her short loincloth blowing in the wind between her spread limbs. After a second, she twitched her leg back and then swung it forward to complete the kick. The man was thrown down by the force onto the edge of the built-up wall, where his head made a heavy impact with it. His skull made a cracking noise as blood splattered onto the wall, as far as a full three meters, and his body went limp almost immediately. He definitely wouldn’t be getting up from that one.

As for the girl, she landed on the roof, legs spread just a little as her heels clicked against the concrete roof. Following her own landing was that of her GLOCK’s empty magazine, clicking against the concrete as well. Almost immediately, she pulled another magazine out of her right storage compartment and loaded it into the bottom of her gun. As she did, she could hear some sinister laughter behind her. “Hm?”

She turned around, lowering her gun after the magazine was in, and faced the source of the laughter: the youngest of the four men. His hands were in his pockets and his back was slightly hunched, a mad grin on his face as he continued to chuckle between clenched teeth.

“What’s so funny?”

“Heheh… Yeah, I get it now. It took me a while, but _now_ I understand!” he softly exclaimed as he raised his head, his sunglasses shining some.

“What’re you talking about?”

His grin shrunk into a smirk as he straightened up. “I know who you are. You’re the bitch who’s been crashing our jets and killing our guys these past three months, aren’tcha? You’ve got a lotta nerve, showing yourself in front of only a _few_ of the guys whose friends you ruthlessly slaughtered!”

As this man spoke, the girl stood, her hair and cape blowing in the wind as she listened to his rant. She lowered her head slightly when he was finished. “Can you really blame us though?”

The man grunted and stepped back in surprise to the girl’s calm reaction.

She stepped forward, one hand clenched into a fist and the other clenched around her gun. “You and your ‘friends’ are cut of the same cloth. You’re all criminals who seek a single objective, no matter how many innocent dead you leave in your wake.” She came to a stop in front of the man and raised her head, her face visible through her mask, wide-eyed and angry. “Scum like you are the reason us PHEROMONEs exist in the first place!”

“Oh, gimme a break!” The man raised his head and stepped back, taking his hands out of his pockets and stretching them out to either side. “You and _your_ kind are a good and dead relic!”

The girl narrowed her eyes, grumbling through her closed mouth as she pressed her index finger against the trigger of her gun. The man lowered his head, as well as his left arm, and brought his right out so it pointed at the girl. He clenched his hand into a fist, and then…

“And your prissy little gadgets of yesteryear are _no_ match for the technology of _now_!”

…and then his sleeve burst into pieces. What was once a seemingly normal-looking arm was now a more monstrous appendage. Or rather, more mechanical. Numerous thin metal blocks coated with an exterior of a humanesque substitute for skin jutted out from the center of his arm, from the shoulder to the wrist. The blocks then shrunk back, but not back into being an arm. The rods connecting each block to the larger metal rods acting as the artificial limb’s arm-bones shrunk down like a pointing stick to a short radius of four inches. From the shoulder to the wrist, each piece of mechanical skin and dermis moved down to that radius, and each individual circle of those pieces connected themselves to one another by flattening each piece out to the point where their edges touched. Meanwhile, flashes of crackling blue electric waves populated the ring of air and extension rods around the structural rods. When the modifications were complete, the man undid his fist and positioned his hand so his palm faced the girl. After which the hand split into six separate pieces and fell back to reveal a hole within. The structural rods were hollow, filled with a denser concentration of electric waves, crackling louder than the ones around the outside.

This was more than just a robotic arm. This was the man’s secret weapon. And judging from the grin on his face, it was a really powerful one.

“Now die!”

In an instant, a shot of blue light fired from his arm, aimed right at the girl. Her eyes widened in response, but not so much in shock as in anticipation of success. In a flash and a raise of her arms and left leg, the girl swiftly shifted to the right, breasts bouncing up and down as she slightly slid right after. The light shot right past her, across the alley and into the distance. Two seconds later, a bright twinkle of light appeared from a faraway building, and erupted into an equally bright explosion. The red and white burst of fire turned the surrounding, blue-tinted area a shade of red, all the way to the building where she stood. In spite of the shaking, she never gave up her pose. Her arms, pointed straight down, remained still, and her legs, her left one slanted to her previous position, did the same.

The man, however, backed up in delayed surprise to the girl’s reaction. “What!?”

“Hn.” The girl grinned as she raised her gun and shot at the man.

The man grunted as he himself shifted to the left, barely avoiding the shot. The bullet grazed his cheek, but no blood was lost, just as the man’s anger persisted. “Oh, it’s on _now_ , bitch!” He rushed forward, raising his weaponized arm as the blue electricity filled it up once more. As his face lunged forward with the rest of his body, a wave of skin cells shot from one edge of the cut on his cheek to the other, immediately healing the wound. His arm came forward and fired another, smaller shot of light.

The girl jumped into the air as the shot came at her, clicking her heels together and bending her legs as an explosion erupted below. The blast wave brought her higher into the air than before, where she did a rapid number of somersaults. She stopped spinning once she was as high as she could jump in that instant, spreading out her arms and blasting downwards with her right leg outstretched. She grinned, chuckling some to herself as she looked down at the man. “Too slow!”

“Yeah!? You call _this_ slow!?” He raised his arm again, the electricity sparking once again for another blast. However, just before he could fire, his arm was kicked aside. “Hrrgh!?”

The girl once again chuckled to herself under breath as she kicked the man’s arm in a bird’s-eye replay, his shot firing just as its trajectory was forced down and to the right.

The blast, much like the first, shot its way across the alley and over to a building in the distance. This building, however, was closer to the fight. Close enough to see the girl kicking the man’s arm aside and forcing a shot out of him from the third-story roof. The blast hit the metal utility pole against the building’s back wall, cutting through one of the horizontal crossarms and the wires mounted atop them. In just as much of an instant as the shot’s impact, the remains of the pole exploded. First the remaining crossbar and wires above, followed by what stood below. The latter explosion burst through to the roof and walls of the building it was against, tearing through the exterior. The red clouds of fire also tore up part of the roof, sending a small air conditioning unit flying towards the fight. The unit sped over the alley, leaving a dark red trail of flame and smoke behind it. Despite all the fighting and explosions going on in the red-tinted air above the still blue-tinted alley, Takashi remained unmoving, as still as he could be given the circumstances.

Back on the roof, the man backed up as he spread both arms to either side, sighing ragged breaths as he tried to process the girl’s almost-superhuman aversions to his weapon. He only got out two before he looked up in distraction. “Huh-hnngh!”

Just like that, the air conditioning unit slammed into his mechanical arm, ripping it off of his body. The man slowly spun his torso back as he watched the unit sail by with his arm in tow. The blue electricity in the arm-blaster still crackled, which told a lot when the unit made contact with the ground meters away from the man and it ripped up the concrete before it while it left a trail of sparks and shrapnel behind it. With blood, featuring traces of an opaque white liquid, splashing out of his newly-gained arm stump, the man’s eyes widened behind his shades, as did his mouth gape in disbelief.

“So much for modern technology, huh?”

The man grunted as he turned around to see the girl… only to be met with her gun pointed at his head. He whimpered as his eyes glanced up at the barrel of the weapon pressing against his forehead.

As the girl’s right arm stretched out as it gripped the gun, she raised her left a little and pressed her thumb against her middle finger. “Now how’s _this_ for ‘yesteryear’?”

She pulled the trigger and shot the man in the head three times. The first time, he was blown back, a spurt of blood emerging from the hole above the spot between his eyes. The second time, his head continued to be blown back but his chest puffed outward, a second spurt of blood emerging from a second hole. The third time, his head was tilted back all the way, a third blood spurt merging it and the first two into one. Each shot was accompanied by a reactive grunt from the man, and a quick, final one accompanied what happened next. The girl snapped her fingers, three small flashes of light emerged at the bottom of the blood sprays, and in an instant, the spray became larger and shot out both the front and back of the man’s head. The force pushed him down to the ground, where he proceeded to lay, a blood splatter surrounding the three holes in his head, and a larger one against the ground where his head rest.

The girl looked down at his corpse, lowering her gun and her snapping hand as she stepped back. She had a small smile on her face; one of accomplishment. “Alright, just one more to go.” She turned to her left, looking in the direction of the faint screams of fury that arose mere seconds before. “And here he comes!”

The last man standing of the four, the one with the buzzcut, ran from the far edge of the building at the girl, his PM-9 raised with his human hand and firing several bullets at her. After letting out his second short scream of fury, he inhaled and let out another, more legible one.

“YOU BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITCH!”

The girl’s small smile turned into a full-on smirk as she completely turned to face the man, crouching down slightly. Then, almost immediately, she darted off towards the man. She clearly ran faster than him, staying to the right to avert his bullets, but he soon stopped in his tracks and pointed his gun at her. She simply stepped back and drifted to the left to dodge the redirected hail of Lugers[1]. He continued to change his trajectory towards her, but she simply stepped back and zigzagged her way over to him. She accomplished this about twice more before he ran out of ammo. All it took was two clicks of the PM-9’s trigger to alert the man of that.

Grunting in frustration, the man threw his PM-9 to the ground as he put one foot forward in preparation to run. He thrust his right arm back to the side, the robotic limb jittering slightly at the quick jerk. The three claws at the end pressed against one another, as if it was clenching into a fist, and then the semi-spherical stump of the arm acting as the base of the claws began spinning, as if the claw-fist became a drill. With a determined grin, the man let out another shout of anger as he ran to the girl and threw his claw-drill at her.

The girl swiftly dodged to the right, the drill failing to make its expected impact. She let out a small, under-the-breath chuckle in response.

“Hn? Gah!” The man’s grunt of anger and dubiety was swiftly interrupted as the girl punched the stump of his limb, bringing the claw-drill to a sudden stop.

The girl grabbed the man’s “wrist” shortly after the impact with her punching hand and pulled his arm towards her. She twisted her hand around as she did, twisting the man’s arm in turn and making him loudly groan in pain. As he stuttered in reaction, the girl pulled the gun out of her holster and pointed it at where his arm met his shoulder: the border between humanity and prosthesis, so to speak.

The man turned to the girl, tilting his head downward and the light moving across his sunglasses as he eyed the girl. “Let go of me, you bitch…”

“Hmph.” The girl pouted as she gripped the man’s “wrist” tighter. “Y’know, I’m _really_ starting to get sick of that word…”

The man grinned again. “Heh. And what’re you gonna do about it?”

“This.”

She pulled the trigger. Five times. The remaining bullets in her GLOCK 33 shot out and lodged themselves in the humanity-prosthesis border, the man grunting for three of the five shots. The girl then threw her gun up in the air and snapped her fingers. Just like with her previous victim, the bullets she fired put off a quick flash, followed by a large blood spray from their impact points. That made the man scream out in a more obvious pain. Now with anger and determination in _her_ eyes, the girl gripped as tight as she could, the metal surrounding the wrist surrogate crunching inwards, and stepped back, pulling once more.

That pull separated the man’s arm from the rest of his body. With nothing more than a face wrinkled with agony and a wide-open mouth gasping in place of screaming, the man tilted back as blood and the same white substance alongside it splashed from his shoulder. Mixed in with the floating fluids were five miniature spears, each one shaped like an arrowhead with four separate edges. That same mix of fluids, minus the spears, came from the end of the arm. The girl pulled it back with her left hand, her right hand raised into the air. The gun she threw up in the air seconds earlier landed in her open hand and as she thrust that hand down, she brought her other hand up, leaning forward as her eyes widened and a strained grunt escaped through her tightly clenched teeth.

And then she threw his arm back at him. The limb spun around in the air before striking the man straight across his chest. He grunted as the force of the limb threw him off of his feet and back several feet, all the way to the built-up wall behind him. The mere impact of his back against the wall broke through the stone material. Now that the chunk of wall was missing, he flew a shorter distance than before, right above an adjacent alley between that building and another, taller one. He screamed as he fell down to the bottom of the dead-end alley, cluttered with trash cans and cardboard boxes in comparison to the surprisingly clean main alley along the building’s length. He landed on a stack of boxes, the top labeled “気変陽光” or “Crazy Sunshine” against a yellow circle, compressing it and making him bounce upwards a bit, followed by a gasp from the impact. His arm soon followed, slamming against his chest and sending his head into the wall. It slumped down, a small trail of blood left behind.

Back on the roof, the now-empty magazine of the girl’s GLOCK dropped to the ground, clicking against the concrete. She then put her gun back in the holster, and then reached into the leftmost compartment on her right shoulder. Just as before, she pulled out a grenade. Rounded body with flat ends, pink heart in the middle with timer display, the general look. “Just to be safe…” she said to herself as she looked down at the grenade in her hand. She pressed the button at the top and tossed the grenade. Much like the man she just defeated, it floated over the cluttered alley before falling down.

In the alley, the man grunted, still alive after the fall. His right shade was broken, his right cheek puffed up, and a tooth or two was missing. He turned his head, blinking once or twice with a quiet gasp, to see the explosive falling from above. Its fall from the top of the roof was slow, most likely for dramatic effect, but as it fell, it rotated, revealing the heart and the timer to the man. It counted down from 0:02. 0:01. The man gasped again, this time in clear fear, as it reached 0:00, as reflected in his half-damaged sunglasses. The grenade beeped several times, then a flash then overtook the reflected time, and then the man altogether.

The grenade went off, a cloud of red and white fire bursting from the dead-end alley into the main alley. In spite of the bright red light that shaded that end, Takashi, shaded in the blue of the alley, remained unconscious and unmoving as it happened.

And with that, all four black-suited men were dead. The middle-aged man laid on the roof with arms splayed upwards like someone sticking their hands up in surrender. Blood soaked into his partially displayed white undershirt from the six bullet holes in his chest, while some more trickled down his partially open mouth. The bald man with spotty facial hair slumped against the built-up wall with his chest pressing against it, his head still in contact with the impact point that killed him, splattered with his blood. Much like the middle-aged man, the young man laid on the roof as well, blood pooling around the back of his head as some trickled down the entry wounds on his forehead. Slight electrical crackling could be heard behind him. As for the buzzcut man’s corpse in the dead-end alley, as the smoke from the grenade cleared, his demise couldn’t have been clearer. His body was charred enough to obscure its features, a good amount of his blood was splattered on the wall behind him, and one of the cardboard boxes that broke his earlier fall was on fire.

The girl looked down into the alley at the results of what she wrought by tossing the grenade. She stood atop the corner of the built-up wall, her cape blowing in the wind as the reflection of the small fire’s faint light obscured her face behind her mask. At least, it obscured half of it. After observing the aftermath in the alley for a few more seconds with a serious face, she inhaled lightly, exhaling a breath as her expression turned into one of pleased accomplishment. “Guess I’m done here.” She turned around and started to run along the built-up wall, just as she did before.

However, as she ran across the top edge of the wall, nearing the second of the four men she killed, she noticed something out of the corner of her eye. “Hm?” She immediately slowed down to a stop, turning slightly and looking down at the main alley. What she spotted was, of course, Takashi, still in the same position as he was before: arm detached, body slouched, head hanging down.

“Poor kid…” She looked down at him for a few more seconds in silence. A silence which was broken with a surprised gasp. “No way. Is that…?” Her question trailed off as she looked at Takashi again, slowly yet silently exhaling from his partially open mouth.

With a determined grunt, the girl turned completely and jumped off the building, landing in the alley on two feet. She immediately started to run, jogging her way to Takashi with light breaths for every two or three steps. She crouched down at Takashi’s side – the one where he was shot – and reached over, pressing her left hand against his forehead and lifting it up swiftly but gently, so she didn’t smack him into the wall. From this lower angle, she got a clearer shot of him. His eyes were closed and his mouth remained partially open, only the top row of teeth visible as he let out another, unconscious, tired, dying breath, louder than the last one.

“Hm… It definitely _looks_ like him. But just to be sure…” She moved her right hand forward now, this time to his pockets. She rummaged around inside the right pocket for a second or two, finding nothing. She groaned softly before moving her hand to the left pocket. This time, after the first few pats, she made a curious hum. Another pat or two later, she found something else. “Aha!” She swiftly pulled out what she felt: the small, thin rod containing his identification. She pressed the button on the right side and, just like before, the holographic display that was his ID popped out, this time with a brighter glow for night viewing. One piece of information on the ID caught the girl’s full attention, though: his full name.

藤島鷹死

Takashi Fujishima

“Yep. It’s him, all right.” She pressed the button again, and the display disappeared. She nonchalantly returned the ID rod to his right pocket, removing her other hand from his head and letting it hang down once more. In the meantime, she looked his body over, most noticeably the arm stump that he unconsciously continued to grip with his remaining hand. “He doesn’t look too good, though.” At closer inspection, she could see blood seep through his fingers and into a small pool beside his right thigh, some of the blood that already leaked having seeped into his jeans. “Any much longer like this, and he’ll surely die.” She looked down in concern, with her hands in her lap. “If only there was _something_ I could do…” She continued to look down in silence. Three seconds later, the silence was broken as she looked up with a blink, her expression changing to one of realization. “Wait a minute…” And then, she raised her head entirely, now sporting wide eyes and a bright smile under her transparent mask. “That’s it!”

Over in the adjacent alley, things remained the same as they did a minute earlier. The buzzcut man was still dead, the various alley decorations were still either charred or on fire, the flames having spread away from the sole outlet. From around the corner, the girl rushed to the alley, turning around and stopping once she faced the dead-end. She started moving her head around, her right hand put to her visored forehead as if she was in search of something. Which she was.

“Let’s see… It should be here somewhere… Aha!” She brought her hand down from her head and pointed at something. “There it is!” That something was the buzzcut man’s robotic arm, which laid beside his charred body with a thin layer of soot spread over the exposed side. “And still intact, too!” She reached out and grabbed the arm, pulling it away as fast as she could with a brief grunt.

Back in the main alley, the girl got to work. She placed the robotic arm on the ground, sooty side up. She picked up Takashi bridal-style before turning, crouching, and setting him down flat next to the arm. That action got a grunt out of both of them. She took a dirty rag and wiped the soot off of the arm, which shone and sparkled upon completion. She threw the rag – plus Takashi’s recently disembodied arm – in one of three trashcans grouped together against the wall. The arm smacked against the wall before falling into the nearly empty trashcan with a thud. She clicked two tabs on the side of the arm, laid perpendicular to Takashi and in alignment with his stump, and lifted up the limb’s top half, revealing its insides. The central portion of the arm was its metal skeleton, consisting of metal rods and cylindrical motors and valves connected by a spherical joint. One half of the skeleton was attached to the claw portion of the arm, while the other connected to a larger, semi-spherical joint. Surrounding the skeleton, and obscuring its more detailed aspects, were a series of different wires, both red and blue and a number of computer chips lining the half-inch thick interior wall. That was all in the half lying on the ground. The other had nothing but some more interior-lined computer chips. Finally, she reached into one of the doors on her left shoulder compartment – the second from the left, to be specific – and took out a blue box with multiple doors decorating the top, as well as the bottom halves of the front and back sides. She set it down on the ground and opened up one of the doors on the front side, pulling out numerous strands of red and blue wire.

With a determined grin, she leaned forward. “Let’s see… Red wires go _here_ , blue wires go _here_ …” She bent over as she worked on Takashi’s arm, wiggling her ass occasionally as she attached the wires. One end of each wire connected to a small hole drilled into the rim of the half-joint, and the other end connected to the meat of Takashi’s arm stump. Before long, she attached the last wire: a blue one that she precisely jammed into both connection points. She moved back, making a forehead-wiping motion with her right arm without actually touching anything. “Whew! Almost there. Now all that’s left is to replace the R-NA.”

She reached into the largest door on top, open from an earlier action, and took out one of presumably several small test-tubes containing a white liquid. The tube was plugged with a small rubber cork, but not for long, as the girl soon removed it. She reached in toward the skeletal upper arm, pushing away a jungle of wires with her thumb and fingers before using her index to flip open a small door on the valve, where she proceeded to pour the liquid in. She moved her hands back almost immediately, letting the door close on its own. Letting the test tube in her hand fall to the ground, she moved her hands forward again, lifting up the top half of the arm and pulling it back onto the bottom, the halves reconnecting with numerous simultaneous clicks.

“This may be an unprofessional job, and possibly illegal too…” The girl then smiled. “But this _is_ one of the more simple models out there.” She closed her eyes. “He’ll be safe, I just know it.” She opened her eyes again, her smile, morphing into a frown of concentration. “Now then…” She placed her hands on the top edge of the arm, her thumb hovering over a button near the bottom of the arm’s rim. “Here goes…” She pressed the button and pulled her thumb back, as several needle-thin spikes shot out of the rim suddenly.

The girl grunted as she pulled the arm back just a little, and again as she pushed it forward with force. The arm met up with Takashi’s stump, the spikes jammed deep into the outermost layers of his dermis. It was shown twice: first from behind Takashi, and once from above. In addition to the spikes thrusting into his exposed inner muscle, a quieter yet sharper piercing sound was heard. Even so, Takashi’s only response was a grunt and a brief clench of his closed eyes, which eventually calmed down after a second.

At first, it was. Seconds after that response, he suddenly opened his eyes, the orb of focus being his right. His eye was open wide and bloodshot, but both his pupil and iris were dilated. Brief electrical shocks moved over his eyes, adding to the blue lighting of the scene. The shocks persisted, and then, everything cut to black.

**[INSERT COMMERCIAL BREAK HERE]**

To open the second act, the series logo stood in what began as darkness, but faded in to what appeared to be the dark insides of a vein. A rough, dark red wall circling around from left to right, top to bottom, with red blood cells drifting downwards to the bottom edge.

**“May 28, 2099.”**

In a brief, blink-or-you’ll-miss-it flash of bright blue, the logo disappeared and the vein’s interior lit up, the blood cells floating down suddenly rising again. All the while, the perspective shot forward, from the halls of the interior vessel to where a thick piece of cylindrical metal invaded those halls, leaving a ring of unoccupied space around it. The POV drifted up as it continued forward and rode the metal into a darker tunnel, where only occasional shines of light grey along the bottom were visible.

**“On that day, I pretty much died.”**

Eventually, the dark tunnel ended, and emptied out into a large cylindrical container. The interior was a solid metallic grey, where small black holes were evenly spaced around the edge of the circular top. The bottom was obscured by the presence of a white liquid that was bubbling, the topmost layer vaporizing into a gas which quickly rose to the top. Hidden inside the gaseous white presence were several nanomachines. These microscopic machines were shiny and grey, shining through the opaque gas with their smooth, bulbous bodies. A white, half-spherical head with four glowing red dots arranged in a diamond was situated atop an ovoid thorax, which was further decorated with two flat-topped shark fins behind the head on either side, as well as small grapplers with three-fingered claws. Their abdomen made the overall body appear in the shape of the bulb, only the base had four circular openings at the bottom as opposed to a single one. The POV focused on one nanomachines in particular, extending its claws as a blast of orange shot from the openings, propelling it towards one of the holes at the top. Appropriately, the perspective followed it.

**“You’d think things would at least remain similar from day to day, but life has a funny way of working sometimes.”**

The nanomachine flew into one of the several dark tunnels, lighting it up with the orange-hot glow from the circular openings in back: its rear motors, so to speak. The posterior glows of accompanying nanomachines to either side of the one also lit up the tunnel, revealing not only the top of the cylindrical metal from before, but the rapidly expanding white gas that raced ahead of the machines. As the two nanomachines on either side of the main one sped ahead, the main one faltered back some, only for a boost of exhaust to propel it forward, in an attempt to catch up.

**“One moment, you’re standing around like it’s no big deal; the next, you’re bleeding to death in an alley somewhere.”**

The nanomachines eventually exited the dark tunnel and returned to the vein, the interior walls taking on a fainter color than they did before. No doubt the result of the white gas. Once the nanomachines spotted one of many floating red blood cells before them, they latched on and remained. First, the leftmost nanomachine found a blood cell and fell back. Next, the right did the same. Finally, the center one found one of its own. But the POV didn’t stop. It just kept going, moving faster through the vein, catching up to and then surpassing the expanding white gas. The further it went, the further it zoomed out. Occasionally, the stray electric shock of blue flashed along the walls of the cardiovascular tunnel, faint crackles breaking through the whooshes of the traveling perspective.

**“Heh. The only reason I’m here telling you all this is because of the girl who found me down there and saved me.”**

Eventually, the vein emptied out into pitch black.

**“Thanks to her…”**

Then, another flash of electric blue sprung about from nowhere, several electric shocks lighting up the darkness and subsequently exposing what it was hiding before dying down to pitch black once more. Particularly, a brain. Takashi’s brain.

**“ _This_ is where my story _really_ begins.”**

********

And thus it all returned to the alley and Takashi’s closed right eye. Just as suddenly as it did the first time, his eyelids shot back, the white orb behind them bloodshot with shrunken pupil and iris. Electric blue shocks not dissimilar to those inside him traveled around and over his eye, posing no harm to it but making Takashi himself twitch lightly. In fact, the shocks traveled all over the outside of his body, the miniature lightning appearing and disappearing for a few seconds at a time. All the while, Takashi held the same expression. Both eyes wide, both eyebrows raised, and his mouth partially open. He was in shock edging on fear, with a hint of confusion mixed in. For as long as the shocks continued, he remained still and frozen save for the minor twitches.

And then, seconds later, the shocks disappeared and Takashi’s expression settled. He let out a small sigh as he did, sitting up with his left hand planted on the ground. He grunted some as he attempted to move himself upright, his new limb clinking some inside as it slowly moved up with him. He struggled for a while, grunting twice more with closed eyes as he tried to bring himself into his desired position, and eventually, he did, gasping and sighing as he opened his eyes slowly and looked down.

In spite of Takashi’s struggle, the girl just sat by, on her knees and looking at him. She smiled brightly in reaction “Ah! He’s awake!” She clasped her hands together, looking down with eyes closed, dampening in joy. “I’m so glad that plan worked…”

As for Takashi, after sighing twice in recovery, he raised his left hand and looked down. “The hell… What happened?” He blinked as he looked down at his hand, twitching his fingers some. “Wasn’t I _dead_ just a while ago?” His eyes shifted over from left to right, lifting his new arm into sight. “And why’s this side feel so heav-GAH!” He suddenly yelped in surprise as he noticed the arm. “W-What the hell is _this_ thing?” As he reacted, he moved the new limb into focus, the claws at the end twitching as well. Grumbling under his breath, he looked up and over at the girl, still expressing her joy in her own little way. “Hey, you!”

“Huh?” The girl raised her head and turned to Takashi, blinking once. “Me?”

Takashi put his human hand on his knee and leaned in slightly. “Yeah, you. You mind tellin’ me what’s going on?”

The girl looked at Takashi for a full second in silence before swiftly turning her head back. She was blushing under her mask, the red aura practically visible through the green translucence. On top of that, she looked down, as if embarrassed. “ _Oh my god_ ,” she thought to herself, “ _He’s actually talking to me…_ ” She looked up slightly, her eyes welling as her mouth slightly hung open. “ _What should I do? I don’t wanna scare him off or anything, especially_ now _of all times…_ ”

As the girl mused to herself, Takashi grew angry, clenching his teeth before slamming his hand down on his leg again and shouting at her. “Hey! I asked you a question, who the fuck shot me!?”

The girl yelped at Takashi’s initial exclamation, and when he was done, she looked up even more, a crooked and awkward smile forming across her face. “ _Crap, now’s not the time to be acting like a lovestruck idiot! Quick, Motoko, just answer his question!_ ” With that, the girl, now known as Motoko, regained a serious expression and turned to Takashi. “You wanted to know who shot you, right?”

Takashi’s expression calmed. “More or less. I heard some gunshots earlier, and figured they came from here. You know anything about that?”

“Oh, _that_? It was me.” Motoko turned her head slightly and pointed up at the building she was on earlier. “I was on that roof, fighting four guys dressed in black suits.” She turned back, eyes closed and a pleased grin on her face as she held her arms out with palms facing upwards. “Not to brag or nothin’, but I killed them all. One of them had a gun like _this_ …” She mimicked holding the PM-9 the buzzcut man from before had on him. “…and I bent it back like _this_ …” She bent her left arm and raised as high as she could, pressing her right hand against her elbow. “…and then he started firing…” She twisted around to show Takashi the aforementioned left arm, mimicking holding a gun one-handed and pretending to pull the trigger. “…and then he shot off your arm!” She grasped the top of her right arm with her left hand, closing her eyes and clenching her teeth in a reenactment of pain. “At least, that’s what I _assume_ happened…” She nervously laughed.

As she explained, Takashi looked at Motoko, unimpressed with her explanation. “Okaaaay… What about _this_?” He raised his robotic arm, looking down at it.

Motoko held up her right hand, index finger pointing straight up. “Luckily, two of the men had R-NA implants, both of them right arms.” She lowered her hand. “So I just took the one that was still in one piece, attached it to you, and here we are.” She laid out her hands again, this time as if she was placing something down as opposed to shrugging like before.

Takashi still looked unimpressed. “Really. _That’s_ what happened.”

“Hm?” Motoko looked at Takashi with slight annoyance. “Of course. You think I’m lying?” 

“With an outfit like _that_ , I wouldn’t be surprised if you were. For all _I_ know, you’re just a chuunibyou who was passing by and happened to get lucky.”

Motoko turned her head away from Takashi, her hands buried in her lap. “Hmph. I’m just gonna ignore that one.” She opened her eyes, her annoyed pout turning into a pleased smile. “Still, I’m glad you’re alright after all that.” She closed her eyes again, happily turning back to Takashi. “Now, why don’t we get out of this dump and head someplace nice and-hey, where do you think you’re going!?”

Much to Motoko’s surprise and annoyance, Takashi was now standing, picking his plastic bag up off the ground. He glanced down at her. “Where else? I’m heading home,” he replied as he started walking.

Motoko turned to face Takashi’s back, still on her knees with her hands still in her lap, glaring at him in irritation. “Y-You can’t leave _now_! Don’t you wanna know more about the person who saved you!?”

Takashi stopped, sighed, and turned around, looking down at Motoko. “Listen carefully, cosplayer bitch.”

“Err!?” Motoko grunted in further vexation.

“I just got shot, and what you did to save me hurts like a motherfucker. What I _want_ is to sleep this shit off. Understand?”

Motoko grumbled softly. “You could at least _thank_ me for saving your life…”

Takashi scoffed in annoyance. “Fine… Thank you for saving my life, now leave me the fuck alone, alright? See ya.” With a nonchalant raise of the hand, he turned around and resumed walking, without a single word more to Motoko, who just sat back and waved goodbye to him cheerfully.

“Bye-bye~!” Once Takashi was far enough away, she lowered her hand and looked back at him with some leftover annoyance. “He’s certainly ruder than I expected…” She turned back and shrugged with a smile. “Oh well, what can you do? Can’t expect him to be perfect, after all.” She looked forward and placed her hand on one of her earphones, pressing the button that made her mask light up before. This time, it did the same. “Hm… There _shouldn’t_ be any other SOREAs out and about tonight, but still, gotta be safe.”

Once again, the inside of her mask displayed a green-tinted map with the phrase “SORETRACKER” in the lower left-hand corner. The display once again showed an aerial view of the alley, where the bright blue dot representative of Motoko was situated in the center. From it was the familiar speech bubble that said “私”. The screen zoomed out to show the street where the alley branched off from, which took on the shape of a backwards L. Several yellow dots were bunched around the street from the alley to the bend, each one with another familiar speech bubble: “SOREA”.

Motoko sighed in frustration. “Just my luck.” She pressed the button on her earphone again, once again rendering her mask transparent. “They must’ve called for back-up when I wasn’t looking…” She remained silent for a second before suddenly, she gasped in fear. “Oh, _dammit_ , he’s gonna get himself killed again!” Without a second thought, she stood up and started running off in the direction Takashi walked off in, worriedly sighing through her teeth with each step.

********

In the meantime, Takashi was down at the end of the alley, leaning against the wall beside the narrow space he came in through. He set down the bag containing his carton of cigarettes on the piece of metal underside beside the flipped-over GTO’s front wheel, the carton’s lid partially misaligned from its previous state, as if someone took it off and put it back. Takashi did indeed do that, as he now had one of the packs, red like the carton they came in, in his hand. Or rather, his robotic claw. As his mouth clamped down on one of the all-white cigarettes, he moved his arm back quickly. He grunted in pain, albeit sounding more like annoyance, as he pulled back, the claws of his new arm crushing the pack in the process. Then, he lifted a silver lighter to the exposed end. Two flicks of the Zippo produced no more than a spark, but a third ignited the flame Takashi needed to light his cig.

Once he was lit, he pulled the lighter back, flipping it closed and stashing it away in his pocket as he inhaled. Shortly after, he exhaled, smoke exiting through his mouth as he looked down with closed eyes. “Man, what a night. First my curiosity gets the better of me, then my arm gets shot off, now I’ve got a freaky new robot one…” As he mused to himself, he stashed the pack of cigs away in his right pocket, bringing his left hand up to the cigarette and gripping it between his index and middle fingers. He inhaled deeply before sighing out the smoke, looking up. “And on top of all that, I’m alive thanks to some weird girl dressed like a Power Ranger for perverts or somethin’…” He groaned slightly as he turned his head back down, eyes closed. “It’s just too much to take in. The sooner I get back to campus, the better.” He stepped forward and turned, about to reach for his bag, but suddenly stopped.

“Ahem. Just _where_ do you think _you’re_ going?”

Takashi was already slightly confused by what halted his approach, but the voice made his eyes widen in dismayed realization. “Oh, _hell_ no…”

It was Motoko, standing behind Takashi with her right hand firmly planted onto his left shoulder. In reaction, Takashi turned his head back in startled anger to face her.

“ _You_ again!?”

Motoko nodded. “Yes, _me_ again.”

Takashi growled under his breath. “What is it _this_ time?” He turned his head back. “You miss me _that_ much after just a few minutes?”

Motoko suddenly blushed, the red aura once again visible through her mask. “Um, well, yes… But that’s beside the point!” she exclaimed after shaking her head free of any romantic thoughts, looking at Takashi with the utmost seriousness right after. “Listen, if you go out that way, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll get killed.”

“Again?” Takashi glanced to the side. “You _don’t_ say…”

Motoko grumbled under her breath in annoyance at Takashi’s indifference to her warning. “You still think I’m lying, don’t you?”

“Look, I don’t care if you’re lying or not, but if you think me going back the way I came is _that_ big a deal, then spill it.”

Motoko sighed. “Fine. Remember the four guys in black suits I mentioned earlier?”

Takashi looked back at Motoko and nodded. “Yeah. What about ‘em?”

Motoko grunted some under her breath as she looked down, about to speak. “Those men I fought… They’re from SORE.”

“Soreh? Never heard of ‘em.”

Motoko grumbled in frustration before resuming. “Allow me to explain.”

Immediately, the setting switched from the alley to a map of Aichi Prefecture, highlighted from the rest of what appeared to be a blue-tinted, zoomed-in map of Japan. In the western portion of the prefecture, a dot popped up exactly where Nagoya was, accompanied by a line of text identifying it as so. “名古屋市”, or Nagoya City. The graphic panned upwards, to the northern edge of Aichi, approximately where the town of Inuyama was located. Another dot popped up, and with it another line of text, this time larger and with more presence. “SORE”, with the furigana “それ”.

“Basically, SORE is an underground crime syndicate, headquartered in Northern Aichi.”

The graphic zoomed inwards towards the dot, until it took up the entire screen. Then, the POV rotated downwards, revealing the dot to be the top of what appeared to be a cylindrical structure. Standing before the structure was a man not unlike those Motoko fought earlier. He wore a black suit and sunglasses, and brandished a PM-9. However, he wasn’t the only one. To either side of him, as well as in front of him, were a series of similarly dressed men, with varying hairstyles from buzzcut to long hair to balding to bald to any combo with facial hair, some also wielding PM-9s but others equipped with miniguns, rocket launchers, robotic arms – from bulky models like Takashi’s to more humanoid but similarly robotic models – or nothing at all. The POV speedily zoomed backwards through this field of black-suited men, and only slowed once it was out of the crowd, tilting upwards to show off their massive numbers: between thirty and forty rows of approximately 100 men each.

“Their ranks primarily consist of an army of black-suited men who fight for them, known as SORE Agents.”

A new line of text flipped onscreen from nowhere, displaying an appropriate written accompaniment.

SOREエージェント

SORE Agents

“SOREAs, for short.”

The text line then flipped over, changing into “SOREA”, with the furigana “それあ”.

And then, the setting switched again, this time to an establishing shot of a small town in the Japanese countryside, surrounded by a mix of empty green plains and several bunches of trees in a darker shade of green, plus some mountains in the distance. The town itself had no buildings over two stories, and the ones that weren’t just the one were minimal. It was fairly quiet, with partial clouds and a bright blue sky. But then came a flash, just above the town’s tallest building.

“As for what they do? Well…”

And then it blew up. A huge cloud of yellow-white fire with red-orange edges erupted from the center of the town, slowly seeping around the buildings at its outskirts and into the space beyond as white smoke.

“They target various towns nationwide and destroy them.”

Flying above the exploding town was a black jet, about the size of a private plane but with a fighter jet’s attributes, the most obvious of which were the missile launchers at the base of either wing, housing three missiles per launcher. However, two of the three missiles on the left launcher were gone, the remnants of smoke trails left in their place.

“Most of the time, they attack from the air.”

Meanwhile, on the asphalt road leading to the town, a number of cars sped down the middle portion. There were three cars in total, all of which were black Jeeps, all of which contained SOREAs. A few stuck their heads out the side windows, while one each was sticking out of the sunroof, waist-and-up. The latter SOREAs brandished their PM-9s, ready to fire as the cars rushed closer to the burning town within their sights.

“Other times, they bring vehicular backup on ground.”

The SOREAs up top then brought their PM-9s into position, holding them in a position to fire. Those near the open side windows did the same, sticking their bodies out as they too aimed their weapons.

“Either way, their M.O. is simple: find a town, shoot to kill as much as possible, and recruit the survivors.”

Once the Jeeps entered the grey smoke seeping from the town’s entrance, they opened fire, the sounds of breaking glass and splashes of blood faint in the background as the gunshots and Motoko’s narration took center stage.

“They don’t do much else besides that, and yet that tactic is as ruthless as it comes.”

Another map faded in as the unseen carnage continued. This time, it was a map of Japan, with various Xs popping up on either of the four islands, particularly around the middle. As the map became solid and displaced the town’s burning outskirts completely, the Xs became more numerous, popping up faster and faster, to the point where Japan was covered in Xs.

“They’ll kill anyone, even women and children, just to reach their ultimate goal: complete domination over Japan.”

And then, the Xs disappeared, replaced with a singular, large red X to contrast the map’s blue tint. Over that red X was a message, also tinted in blue and made present by flipping up from nowhere.

SOREの財産

Property of SORE

The setting then switched back to the alley. Motoko was still standing behind Takashi in the position she was before, left hand on his shoulder, and continued to look down as she spoke. Takashi, meanwhile, looked over his right shoulder at Motoko and listened to what more she had to say.

“For the past couple years, I’ve been fighting SORE, taking out as many of their aircrafts and attack cars as possible.” She shook her head softly. “A few managed to slip through my fingers…” Once she finished shaking, she smirked. “…but for the most part, if I spot a SOREA…” She looked up, eyes wide open in determination. “…they’re as good as dead!”

“Really, now.” Takashi replied, with much less disbelief and a little more interest than before. Even so, as he turned around to face Motoko, shrugging her hand off his shoulder, scant traces of his earlier annoyance remained on his expression. “So, what? You gonna show me a detour or somethin’ before killin’ all those SORIA guys out there?” He raised his left arm and pointed behind him with his thumb.

“I _would_ …” Motoko closed her eyes and shrugged, complete with a sly grin. “But since you’re _so_ hell-bent on getting back to your place…” She lowered her arms and pointed at Takashi. “…you’re gonna kill them _for_ me.”

Takashi’s eyes shot wide open in shock, his pupils and irises shrinking together in emphasis. He stepped back, his surprise superseding his annoyance. “Wait, what!? The hell’d _that_ come from?” he exclaimed as he leaned forward, hands held up and open. He then clenched them shut, his face twisting into a more annoyed demeanor. “Weren’t you just going on about how all SORAIAs are as good as dead or some shit?”

“True, I _did_ …” Motoko reached up and patted her gun, still in its leg-mounted holster. “But I’m kinda running low on ammo right now. Normally, taking out twenty SOREAs would be no problem.” She closed her eyes and lowered her head. “But I packed light tonight, and I’d hate to use up what little I’ve got left.” She looked back up, once again in determination. “Besides, you’re plenty capable of taking them out.”

Takashi’s eyes narrowed. “Really? What makes you say _that_?”

“For starters~…”

All of a sudden, Takashi blushed brightly, his teeth clenched as he stifled what could’ve been a flustered moan. Motoko’s hand was in his left pocket, rummaging around for a second before pulling out his XD, pointing it in the air.

“There’s your gun.” She turned her head to look at it. “I gotta say, this is a good model you’ve got here.” She turned her head a few more times, turning the gun along with it to get a better look. “Though I doubt two X-Tension magazines will be enough to get the job done.”

Takashi just glared at Motoko, still blushing with hand and claw pressed against his pockets in protectiveness. “That shit doesn’t matter, keep the hell outta my pockets!”

“Even so…” Motoko tossed the XD back at Takashi, who nonchalantly caught it with his left hand, still lightly blushing with a scowl of annoyance. “…you’ve still got your R-NA implant.”

Takashi grunted as he looked down at his robotic arm, once again looking down at it as the claw ends twitched, as if he was practicing clenching a fist with it.

“If you wanna conserve your ammo, just use _it_ instead.” Motoko put her hands on her hips. “Not only that, but if SORE winds up killing you, it should keep you alive.” She nodded a few times. “Yep, no problems there.”

Takashi grunted some, returning the XD to his pocket. “That’s all, huh? The expert killer saves a dying stranger in a dark alley, only to throw him to the dogs. That’s a pretty inconsistent way to act, even after explaining it, ya know.”

Motoko’s grin of satisfaction in her answer disappeared just as Takashi idiomized her request – or rather, order – replacing itself with a frustrated frown. Her eyes narrowed and her lips twitched in annoyance as he continued, grumbling under her breath. After sighing in frustration, she blinked once and looked back at him with her regular eyes. “Look, are you gonna go out there and kill those bastards or not?”

Takashi scoffed, chomping down on his cig as he looked down at the ground, hands on his hips as well. “Tcch! Alright, fine, since you’re so goddamn adamant about it…”

A bright smile immediately replaced Motoko’s serious look, and to match she clapped her hands together. “Perfect!” She leaned her upper body forward and patted the still-frustrated Takashi on the chest. “Best of luck to you, big boy~!” With that, she turned around and leaped into the air.

The sudden departure took Takashi by surprised, as he looked up in a shocked gasp. “H-Hey, wait! Where do you think _you’re_ goin’!?”

As Takashi called out to her, Motoko landed on the top edge of the building to his right, running across the edge with arms behind her. As she disappeared into the distance, he let out one last shout.

“GET BACK HERE, YOU BITCH!!!”

She provided no response, as she was already gone. His cry was nought but received by the late night sky, a dark blue tinted red from the remnants of fire and smoke further down the alley.

Takashi grunted in frustration as he lowered his head, grinding his cig between his teeth. “Dammit… She _really_ expects me to kill all those guys, doesn’t she?” He grunted again, turning around and swiping his bag off the GTO by the handles. “Whatever. For all _I_ know, there’re probably no ‘guys’ to begin with.”

Out in the main street, now barren of any and all people that might’ve been there before and lit up only by the night sky and the occasional streetlamp lighting up the street and sidewalks, a car sat in the middle of the road, positioned such that the entrance to the alley on the right was within sight. Through the car’s darkly tinted windshield, decorated only by the rear-view mirror and the black frit up top, one inside could see Takashi come into view. He took a few steps out of the alley, stopping on the sidewalk before inhaling from his cig. For a second, his gaze shifted to the left… and then stopped before it could dart back. Just as quickly, Takashi, his mouth partially open, jerked his head and body to the left to see what came within his sight. His eyes were wide as if he was startled and his cigarette looked like it was about to drop out of his mouth.

“Well, shit.”

Down near the bend in the road, just a hundred or so feet away from the alley’s entrance, was a large group of black-suited men: the SOREAs. There were nine standing troops visible, all standing in two rows of four or five each, between two black Jeeps parked on either side of the street. Each ground troop wielded a PM-9, none of them raised at Takashi but prepared to. Their individual appearances varied: hair alternating between black and brown, typically a short cut covering their head; some appearing larger than others, through either excess fat or muscle; and some even appeared to have spotty facial hair. Even so, they looked at him with the same unexpressive face, sunglasses hiding the eyes and mouths fixed into an indifferent scowl.

There was also a tenth SOREA, the only one of any discernable difference who did not wield a PM-9 like the rest. As opposed to standing, sat on the roof of a third Jeep parked behind and between the first two, legs spread and feet resting on the vehicle’s hood. He had a balding head of brown hair fading to gray, with thin layers of hair horizontally brushed across the top in an attempted comb over. He was smoking a cigarette, much shorter than the one Takashi was working on, smoke trailing from the butt and into the air almost continuously. The amount of smoke only increased as the man exhaled. This man was their leader, commanding and watching over the army of SOREAs sent to take out the target before them.

And all he could do after the initial surprise was look on in dull fascination. “…Huh.” Takashi stepped out into the street, turning to face the group of SOREAs. “Guess she wasn’t lying after all.”

Most of the SOREAs remained still as they watched Takashi, waiting for orders. But in the back, one SOREA – a younger man with a full head of messy black hair – did otherwise, tilting his head back toward the leader without changing position to ask him something.

“Hey, boss, you think we should let this guy pass?”

“Hmph. Why _should_ we?”

The SOREA turned his head back. “For starters, he’s not our target. Hell, he might just be some random pedestrian.”

Takashi now stood in the middle of the street, facing down the crowd of SOREAs with an impatient look.

“Him? A simple pedestrian? Not with that R-NA implant, he’s not.”

The POV then focused on Takashi’s right arm, lightly swaying back and forth with the occasional shine from what streetlamps remained lit reflecting off the surface.

“True. Still, we were told to take out the girl, _not_ anyone who gets in our way. Maybe we should let him pass…”

“You idiot, we can’t run that risk. Sure, the girl may be our target, but anyone connected to her is fair game, conspicuous or no.” He exhaled again, more smoke coming out in a steady stream.

“If you say so, sir…”

“Damn straight,” the leader said with a grin. And then, with a small grunt, he raised his feet and slammed them down onto the hood of the car, forming dents as he now stood. His teeth clenched down on his cigarette as he glared forward at Takashi. “Hey, you!!”

“Hm?” Takashi looked up at the leader, the stare and scowl on his face exuding disinterest. “Me?”

“Yeah, you! Tell me, you with the girl!?”

“The girl?” Takashi raised his eyebrow, but only for a second before it came back down. “Hn. You mean the one in blue with that green mask, right?”

“Tch!” The leader scoffed in anger. “He knows her!” He raised his hand and pointed at Takashi. “All men, open fire!” Just as he commanded, the other SOREAs raised their PM-9s at Takashi, fingers on the triggers and ready to fire.

Takashi’s eyes widened, taken aback by the SOREAs’ response. “Hey, wait just a-”

And then they fired. The nine PM-9s pointed at Takashi released their ammo rapidly, all of it directed at him. The bullets hit him in the chest and arms, a couple landing in his head, tearing through his shirt and skin. Those that hit his mechanical arm deflected off or caused minor dents, but blood shot out from his skin wounds, soaking into his shirt as he slowly stepped back, grunting with every couple rounds. Most of the grunts were quick and pained, and no screams sought to emerge from this storm of grunting. Even so, they appeared to show no fear, even as his eyes remained open wide in shock. Several seconds passed before the bullets ceased, but just before they could, Takashi dropped his bag and fell to his knees, landing face-first on the street, wheezing in exhaustion.

The SOREAs then lowered their guns. One SOREA on the far left side of the front line, with tan skin, a full head of black hair, a thin but appealing mustache-beard combo, and a decently muscular build, grinned as he lowered his. “There, that should take care of him.” He stepped forward, looking around. “Now, where’s the girl? She can’t have gotten far…”

As the one SOREA looked around, the others stood still and remained focused on where they shot down Takashi. However, as opposed to their earlier indifference, their mouths were open in surprise, a few gasps amongst them. After a few seconds, a strained groan rang out, grabbing the attention of the distracted SOREA, who turned his head with a small grunt and followed it up with his own gasp of surprise.

Takashi was still kicking. He inhaled and exhaled in a series of exasperated wheezes, the claws of his robotic arm pressing against the ground as he forced himself upright. “D-Damn… She wasn’t kidding… You bastards really _are_ ruthless, aren’tcha? Gunnin’ down a bystander just tryin’ to get home and sleep off already dyin’ _once_ tonight…” As he wheezed out his words, Takashi got to his knees, both his human arm and his robotic one contacting the ground. A number of the bullet wounds visible through the holes in his shirt were gone. Those that remained healed themselves, morphing from visible wounds to fully healed albeit bloodstained skin in a matter of seconds. “How low of you…” From his kneeling position, Takashi slowly rose to his feet, blood dripping from his forehead as a bullet pushed its way back to the surface as it healed, popping out seconds later. All the while, he kept up a calm smile, very unlike the shocked reaction he gave them before. “But hey, after _that_ stunt, what excuse do I have?” He raised his head and looked right at the SOREA army, hand and claw clenched into fists and a determined, if not malicious, grin spread across his face, chomping down on his still-burning cigarette. “Might as well kill you all like she said!”

The majority crowd of SOREAs looked on at Takashi after he returned to his feet, chattering amongst themselves in surprise and anger. Besides further gasps, there were such quiet exclamations as “The hell?” “Am I seeing things?” and “Should’ve seen _that_ one coming.” But all of those were undercut by the reaction of the tan-skinned SOREA, now grinning in amusement, ready to rush into action in spite of only having one hand on his weapon.

“Shall we, commander?” he shouted to the leader, still standing atop the hood of the center Jeep.

“Go ahead.”

“Right!” With a nod, he put both hands on his gun and rushed forward with a loud yell of fury, with several more following behind. “This is _it_ , you little punk!”

“Heh.” All Takashi could do was grin as he saw the SOREA rushing at him, reaching towards his left pocket with his corresponding hand, as if he were about to pull something out…

“Now die!!” the SOREA screamed as he stopped and raised his PM-9 up, about to fire.

Then Takashi raised his hand up. Out of his pocket, he drew his XD, his finger already on the trigger, and one of his cartridges, which remained in midair. Just as quickly as he revealed his firearm, he swung it down, loading it with the cartridge before raising it up and firing at the SOREA. The bullet hit him right in his trigger hand, making him grunt and loosen his grip on his weapon. It wasn’t long either before a second bullet hit him square in the head, blood splashing from the impact point as he gasped and collapsed. Takashi’s focus, though, turned to the other SOREAs rushing at him, shouting in fury themselves and firing at him right away. Unfazed by the bullets and with the same grin he wore when the first came at him, Takashi rushed in turn towards the rest.

A slightly younger SOREA than the average with light brown hair came at him first, firing numerous times before stopping. He inhaled sharply through clenched teeth as he took one step forward, but as he did, he was met with the XD’s barrel pressed to his prominent forehead, which then fired into him. His choked grunt and the blood coming from the back of his head didn’t stop another SOREA from rushing at Takashi while still firing. Instead of going right for him like he did his second kill, Takashi stepped to the side and turned on his foot, pointing his gun at the SOREA’s temple and shooting it next. He quickly twisted back into his first position and kept firing, nailing three more headshots at the SOREAs that kept coming forth. Again, the subsequent blood splatters did nothing to deter the next SOREA in line to challenge Takashi. The next SOREA in question, with brown hair and beard plus a peach-fuzz mustache, shouted in fury as he fired directly at Takashi’s own trigger hand.

The bullets hit his hand enough to make some holes and bloody the limb, but Takashi was not deterred. He threw his gun into the air and threw his arm back, his plastered-on grin widening as he tightened his robotic fist, the claws pressing together and the base to which they were attached starting to spin. Takashi let out his own furious scream as he brought his new appendage forward, the claw-drill spinning faster as it reached its impact point: the SOREA’s stomach. The limb punched through his torso completely, prompting him to wheeze in pain. Takashi, meanwhile, stood still post-impact for a few seconds before pulling his arm out swiftly. A large blood spray came from the wound, the red almost glowing in the light, blue-tinted presence of the surrounding empty street.

After pulling out, Takashi shifted to the left and ran past the collapsing SOREA, raising his left hand to catch his gun. Just as he lowered it, another SOREA came at him who, like the rest, fired a barrage of bullets at him. Takashi shifted further and spun around on his left foot, raising his gun and shooting the SOREA in his temple. With that, he completed the spin and resumed running, with a smaller grin filled with as much determination as before.

“Damn! There’s no end to you assholes, is there?” he asked as he looked over at another group of eight or nine SOREAs, emptying out of one of the side Jeeps. They all had PM-9s and were ready to fire at Takashi. In response, he scoffed. “Whatever. Just more of you kill, as far as _I’m_ concerned!”

Takashi’s eyes shot open as he raised his robotic arm and clenched it into a fist again, activating the claw-drill, which started to spin almost immediately. Once he reached the crowd of new SOREAs, he threw the punch, landing it in the face of the foremost SOREA before he had the chance to fire. The claw-drill tore through the upper half of his head, essentially destroying it with that sole punch. As the splash of blood from the impact dissipated and the SOREA fell, Takashi swung his arm back and raised his gun in turn. He fired, landing a headshot in the next SOREA within his line of fire, who went down with an exasperated grunt. That second kill in that group was enough to get the other SOREAs to start firing at Takashi.

As before, undeterred by the bullets, Takashi rushed in, getting hit in the chest but moving forward nonetheless. He stopped in his tracks as one SOREA in the crowd tried to rush him from his right; he swiftly turned in that direction and dealt him a fatal headshot. Another SOREA tried to do the same from the left, screaming as he raised his gun, as if he were about to knock Takashi out. He too received a headshot, as Takashi bent his arm back to shoot him, looking behind in the meantime. A third SOREA rushed at him from the front, but Takashi swiftly turned back to take care of him. One shot grazed his cheek near the mouth, taking some skin with it, and then the next was a headshot, blowing him back and making him collapse on the adjacent sidewalk.

With a grunt and a small grin, Takashi jerked his gun down slightly, the cartridge dropping out of the bottom. But then, he heard a trio of shouts. “Hm?” Coming up behind him were three SOREAs, jumping into the air and preparing to fire again. Takashi grunted again, grinning wider as he clenched his robotic fist, and swiftly turned around once more. This time, he spun much faster, and his brought his arm forward to attack. Not only that, but at closer inspection, it appeared that his red eyes were glowing…

But no matter. His arm swung across the three SOREAs, and in little to no time at all, they were torn in half, blood spraying out of their backs in a huge splash across. Takashi soon emerged from the blockade of still-midair corpses, jumping onto the head of the middle one and leaping into the air. He turned around in midair just as he started to come back down, and as he did, yet another SOREA rushed at him. This one younger than the average, with light brown hair in a short cut, he fired at Takashi as he shouted out in anger. “You bastaaard!!”

Takashi landed on the ground and, with a smirk and a strained grunt, he rushed forward, robotic fist still clenched and claw-drill once again spinning, as he prepared to attack the SOREA with it. And he did, swinging the arm forward and making impact. The force was strong enough to both swat the SOREA away to the side _and_ tear through his exposed abdomen. With a soft gasp and a look of pained shock, the SOREA was slammed against the wall of a nearby building, both halves of his body making contact with the steel exterior before falling to the ground.

Takashi then lowered his arm, his smirk smaller than before but not gone altogether. He reached into his left pocket and took out his second cartridge, loading it into the XD which he now held in his robotic claws. But just as he loaded it, he heard the screeching of tires. “Hm?” Puzzled, he turned to see where it was coming from.

It came from the other side Jeep, which had just taken off from its previously stationary position. It swerved to the right as it moved past the still-inactive center Jeep, doing nothing to faze the leader who still stood on the hood of the car but made the SOREA he talked with earlier inch out of the way, backing up against its grill as he narrowly avoided getting hit by the back end of the other one. The Jeep’s back swung a little farther to the right as it soon centered itself and came barreling towards Takashi, headlights flashing down on him as he stood and watched. He inhaled deeply through clenched teeth, caught off guard by the vehicle heading right for him...

…and then he got hit. The Jeep sped into him and kept on moving. Inside the car were five SOREAs, two in front and three in back. The driver, an older SOREA with dreary brown hair that was thinning at the top and a light five o’clock shadow, snickered alongside his black-haired passenger just after impact, tilting his head back. “Well now, he won’t be getting up from _that_ one!” Just as he was finishing his sentence, he was barely interrupted by a loud, metallic bang, just outside the car. While his passenger suddenly jumped and backed up in surprise, the driver simply grunted as he moved his head down and looked out the windshield. He yelped loudly in surprise.

The banging noise was Takashi’s arm punching the hood of the Jeep. He pulled his knees onto the hood right after, and after another second, he looked right at the SOREAs through the windshield, his eyes strained in anger, to the point of appearing dark around the whites. As he looked up, he raised his gun and pointed it at the passenger side, firing through the windshield twice. The first shot broke through the glass and hit the passenger SOREA in the cheek, while the second was a headshot, resulting in a blood splatter against his headrest and the window right next to him, as well as part of the driver SOREA. The driver didn’t react to the splatter at all, though, as his focus remained on Takashi, his mouth agape in shock and a quiet gasp lingering in the air of the car. His head turned to the left as Takashi burst through the broken windshield, shattering it with both his body and his claw-drill fist, which kept moving even as Takashi landed on the corpse of the passenger SOREA. As the fist punched through the dead man’s head, taking out the combined portion of headrest and seat that laid behind it, Takashi looked right at the driver and pointed his gun at him. Only one shot was needed to kill the driver, once again in the form of a headshot. From the impact of the bullet, the back of his head slammed against the window with the blood splatter that emerged from it, and his limping arms turned the wheel, which he gripped onto tightly in his demise, to the far left. The sudden turn was enough to startle Takashi, who grunted as he brought his robotic appendage forward and gripped the other, undamaged front-seat headrest with his claws.

On the street the car swerved left, moving around in circles as it kept shifting in that direction. The second time it turned around in the opposite direction, the wheels went over the adjacent sidewalk, and with the following half-turn, its side slammed into the concrete wall of the adjacent building. As the crashed Jeep was brought up off its right-side wheels, the driver’s side door flew off and Takashi jumped out of the somewhat-makeshift opening. He landed back on the asphalt street, sighing heavily with arms spread to either side. With a short, angry growl, he looked behind him and then turned around, pointing his gun at the car. One of the three SOREAs that were in the backseat opened the exposed backseat door and rushed out, screaming in fury as he pointed his gun at Takashi. But before he could fire, Takashi fired first, the bullet hitting him in the arm. He moved his gun back with his arm, the ensuing grunt of pain cut off by another bullet, hitting him square in the head before he fell to his knees. The next SOREA to emerge from the backseat, a little larger than the first one, grunted as he came out at a slower but still-immediate pace, about to raise his own PM-9, but two shots to his arm from Takashi’s XD kept him from immediately doing so, instead having him step back in reaction to the pain. As with the first, it was another headshot that brought him down, his head thrown back as he collapsed off to the side. Which gave enough room for the last backseat SOREA, shorter than the first two, to come out. He started to let out a small scream of anger as he shifted to the right, but another bullet hit him in the arm, making him yelp out and drop his gun. Yet another headshot, this time to the temple as opposed to the forehead, was what took him out, his blood splattering on the rear quarter window of the car as he collapsed.

After firing all shots, Takashi sighed heavily, keeping his gun raised for a few seconds before lowering it. He grunted as he looked off to the side. “Damn. I’m just gonna waste ammo on these guys at this rate.” He let out another, longer grunt as he turned around to his right, scouring the area with his eyes. “There needs to be a way for me to take ‘em all out in one go,” he mused to himself as he turned and looked around some more. After a few seconds, he looked straight ahead and suddenly gasped.

Just across from him, on the other side of the street, was a familiar electrical box, built against a stone wall, lifted a foot or two off the ground, and closed shut. And atop that box? The can of BRONZE★STAR beer.

Takashi grinned at the sight, nodding with a grunt. “There!” He started jogging across the street to the box, but as he did, yet another SOREA came rushing at him.

“You bastard!!” the SOREA shouted as he pointed his gun at Takashi in the distance. “You’re gonna pay for what you did to-gahh!”

Slowing down in his run but without coming to a stop, Takashi turned to the SOREA, pointed his gun at him and killed him with another headshot. With that obstacle out of the way, he continued on until he reached the box, slowing down again but this time to a stop. He reached up with his robotic arm and grabbed the beer can, slowly and carefully gripping it with his claws as he removed it from the box, the beer sloshing around inside its aluminum confines. His grin faded as he looked down at the can, his mouth gently pursing around the still lit, ever-shrinking cigarette in his mouth before spitting it out. The butt fell right into the open can, and then, not a second later, flames started coming from the small opening, exuding a red-orange light around the top. Takashi grinned once more, taking his eyes off the makeshift can as he turned around, walking back into the middle of the street. All the while, he tossed the can lightly into the air and caught it again, as if it were a mere toy as opposed to the makeshift grenade it was.

Back at the only Jeep the SOREA backups had left, the leader, still standing on the hood of the car, leaned forward to look at Takashi, fists clenched and eyes squinting behind his shades as he grunted around his own cigarette. “The hell’s he even doing?”

As another SOREA exited the Jeep to watch Takashi also, the SOREA the leader spoke with earlier gulped in anticipation. “Don’t know… But it doesn’t look good.”

Takashi then stopped in the middle of the street, looking right at the last Jeep with a determined grin, continuing to toss the can into the air and catch it again. The SOREAs at the Jeep stared with partially open mouths, gasping amongst themselves as they blinked in expectation. Once more, the can fell into Takashi’s claws from its temporary time in the air. But instead of tossing it up yet again, Takashi tightened his claws around it and crushed the can. Not enough to break it open but enough for the flames to shoot out the top.

Takashi then clenched his teeth, grunting in anger through them as he raised the can and thrust his arm back, raising his left leg into the air as his pull back went farther. And then, he brought his arm forward and threw the can, rotating around as it flew straight forward to the Jeep. The three SOREAs outside the car gasped heavily in shock, the leader doing so through his teeth, as they saw the can coming right for them. Takashi, meanwhile, tightened the grip on his XD and brought it up next, his robotic limb coming up as well and resting against the gun-wielding hand. He pulled the trigger, the bullet burst out, following the same trajectory as the can did, and just as the can reached the SOREAs, the bullet pierced through it. Flames burst from the hole made in the side, and a bright yellow light shot through both openings, shining on the SOREAs as they gasped again in further shock…

And then the can exploded. Takashi’s shooting form became a silhouette as his target exploded before him, a bright yellow flash accompanying the white, orange, and red balls of fire bursting from the impromptu detonation. The force of the explosion propelled the burning Jeep out of the smoke and flames, flipping forwards as it traveled in the opposite direction, and into a building just behind it, right at the L-turn corner of the street. When the car made impact with one of the steel columns on the visible exterior of the multi-story building, it too exploded into further flames, a brief yellow flash emitting from the point of impact before red and orange flames burst out and engulfed the vehicle.

As both singular explosions and their thundering noises died down, Takashi exhaled quietly, standing up straight and undoing his firing stance. He swiftly brought his left arm down and a little more gently his right, inhaling deeply before exhaling with a sigh, looking forward at the damage he had wrought in this short a time.

The first wave of SOREAs that came at him laid in the middle of the street, a multitude of headshots and one hole through the stomach, all leaking blood either onto the surface surrounding the entry wound our out into the street, where it started to darken. The second wave, which Takashi came _to_ , were motionless as well, also a collection of headshots, with four bisected bodies lying on the edges. The third wave too was dead, either inside or around the Jeep of theirs that Takashi crashed, windshield broken and side stained with blood from the three who exited. As for the rest, their bodies were nowhere to be found immediately where the Jeep used to be, with the exception of one. As the smoke from the first explosion cleared, the flames from the second still burning in the background, the leader laid face-down, parts of his outfit burned and others, plus his skin, stained with soot. What’s more, he grunted, pressing his palm against the asphalt and forcing himself up. Panting heavily as blood leaked from his head and down his cheek, one of the lenses on his shades broken to reveal his tired eye, he looked up at Takashi in anger.

“Why you…”

Bang. One last headshot. The leader wheezed, his eyes shrinking as he tilted his head back in the aftermath of the shot, collapsing face-first to the ground.

Takashi jerked his gun down just a little, forcing the last magazine out, as he lowered it, stashing it away in his left pocket as started walking. “That should be all of ‘em. And about damn time, too. Fuckin’ tired…”

As Takashi walked past the corpses of the first wave in the middle of the street, he reached down and picked up the plastic bag containing his cigarette carton. Aside from some blood splatter and a couple holes torn in the side, it wasn’t _too_ worse for wear. Further down the street, he reached into his right pocket with his left hand and whipped out another cigarette, without even removing the pack from its confines. The cig was situated between his index and middle fingers, and as he brought his arm back to its corresponding side, he flipped it around, so that the back of his hand was exposed as the end of the cig was. He raised his hand some, putting the exposed end in the trajectory of a falling piece of black fabric, likely the jacket of a SOREA, still-burning as it floated down through the smoky air. The end brushed through the flames as Takashi moved forward and the fabric made contact, lighting the cigarette just like that. Takashi brought the cig to his mouth and pursed his lips around it as he inhaled, removing it from his hand. The smoke now in his mouth, he whipped his hand back into position and jerked his head down slightly, a hardened, if not determined, look in his eyes.

Regardless, he kept walking towards the corner of the street, the POV zooming out to show what he was leaving behind: the bodies of the SOREAs, in the form of the three groups directly slaughtered and the leader all alone where the car used to be, and the three Jeeps, one crashed into the wall, another tipped over onto its side, and the third still burning directly in front of Takashi. But as he turned the corner, the latter Jeep was behind him too. With that, his work was done.

********

Back at Shin Nagoya University’s campus, Dormitory Dai stood tall amongst the other dorm buildings along the same street, standing tall. The lights from the lobby and those surrounding the sign above the entrance were on, but very few of the dorm room windows were still lit. The upper floors were practically invisible, above the streetlamp-lit street it sat on. But even so, Takashi made it back.

The door to room #1984 opened up, and Takashi stood there as he had the first time, right hand up against the pad that granted him access and left hand on his hip. This time, however, he had a cigarette in his mouth, his right arm was replaced with his bulky new robotic one; his shirt was splattered with blood, riddled in bullet holes, and missing a sleeve; and some more blood was on his jeans and his face, albeit in lesser quantity.

“Hey, I’m back.”

“Hm?” Tomoki laid on the futon in the middle bunk as he had before, his headphones now hanging around his neck and emitting a faint but incomprehensible noise. He tilted his head toward the door with a partially opened mouth, but retained his scant disinterest as he turned to look at Takashi, shifting upwards someone as he supported himself with his right hand. “Oh, hey, Taka-san. Welcome ba-…”

Tomoki cut himself off as he got a better look at Takashi, the remnants of the last word he said trailing off into a high-pitched gasp of a shriek. Because there stood Takashi, expression unchanging as he brought his new arm down by his side, doing nothing else as he allowed Tomoki to fully register the state he returned in.

“T-Taka-san!” Tomoki slammed his hand against the edge of his bunk as he swiftly shook his head and reopened his eyes wide in shock and awe. “What the hell _happened_ to you!?”

Takashi grunted as he stepped inside, the door sliding shut behind him. “Oh, let’s just say I had a bit of a rough night.”

As Takashi moved closer, Tomoki got out of his bunk, lowering himself to the floor before bringing his hands down and forcefully stiffening them as he faced Takashi again. “‘Rough night’, my ass! _Look_ at you! You’re missing your arm!”

“So what? Got a new one.”

“Yeah, but your shirt’s full of holes!” he exclaimed, holding his hands out at Takashi’s shirt.

“True, I _did_ get shot a few times,” Takashi replied as he lightly smacked Tomoki’s left hand away with his own left, walking past him to his bed.

Tomoki turned his head around as he kept speaking. “And is all that blood even _yours_!?”

Takashi took his cig out of his mouth and exhaled, his smoke filling the air as he bent down and ground the butt of the cig into an ashtray on the shelf surrounding his bunk. “Nah, killed a few guys too.”

“And you _admit_ that!?” Tomoki turned around, looking at Takashi in disbelief with continued forced stiffening of his open hands. “What the hell did you even _do_ out there!? I thought you just went out for some smokes!”

Takashi sighed in frustration as he set the bag containing the carton of cigs down, turning around to face Tomoki. “Look, a _lot_ went on while I was out, and I’m _too_ goddamn tired to bother tellin’ ya the whole story right now.” He sat down on the futon, shifting around to the left and rolling over so he laid down on his side, back facing Tomoki. “So if you wanna know all the details, try botherin’ me ‘bout it tomorrow, alright?”

Tomoki balled his hands into fists and murmured under his breath before letting out a defeated sigh and letting his arms hang down in emphasis of his defeat. “Alright, Taka-san.” He resumed murmuring as he walked over to the ladder at the side of the bunk bed and started climbing up.

Takashi looked back at Tomoki as he climbed up. “Good.” He looked back and reached up with his left arm, past the carton of cigs and up to a set of two paddle light switches, placing his index and middle fingers on both switches. “Don’t wanna put up with any more of your shit,” he grumbled under his breath before switching the lights off, everything suddenly switching to black. “Hm. Not right now, anyways…”

********

Before long, the next morning arrived. The digital alarm clock at the foot of Takashi’s bed read “07:00” in the customary blocky red text, giving off a pair of beeps every second. In the middle of the third pair, the alarm cycle was interrupted by a bullet going through the clock. And another, and another, and another. The first bullet forced the clock up slightly into the air, all four red digits becoming 8s, while the last three took pieces out of it, ultimately forcing it against the back wall where it slumped back down onto the ledge where it initially stood.

Pointed at the clock’s remains was Takashi’s XD, smoking at the barrel. Of course, the trigger man in question was Takashi himself, still lying in the position he fell asleep in the previous night, pointing his gun without bothering to look. Groaning quietly, he lowered his gun and supported himself up with his left hand, pushing the side of his gun into the bed. He further supported himself with his new right arm, grunting some in pain as he entered a sitting upright position, glaring at the damaged alarm and exhaling slowly through his mouth at least twice. “Damn, that thing drives me nuts…”

Not long after getting out of bed, Takashi moved into the bathroom, switching on the showerhead looming above the stall and letting the water spray down. The back and right walls of the shower shared the same brown tiling as the rest of the bathroom, while the front wall was a door and the left was a window looking in, gradually fogging up with steam. From what was visible through that window-wall, situated next to the toilet, the completely-naked Takashi stood as he ran a bar of soap across his chest in a repeated up-and-down motion. He later moved the bar to the right, lifting up his right arm to get to the spot he wanted, but as he did, he grunted in pain, clenching his teeth tightly and squeezing his eyes shut. He slowly opened the latter as he grunted again in the aftermath. “That’ll take some getting used to…” He slowly lifted up his right arm and kept it in a horizontal raised position as he moved the bar to scrub his side. As his arm hung there, the water from the showerhead sprayed onto it, some immediately deflecting off as the rest slowly moved down the curves and dripped off the bottom.

Later, back in the main area of the dorm room, a thin rod similar to that containing Takashi’s ID had been placed in front of the ruined clock, the holographic screen protruding from it displaying a note:

友樹,  
また目覚まし壊れでかん。  
直せ。  
鷹死

Tomoki,  
My clock broke again.  
Fix it.  
Takashi

As for Takashi himself, he stood in front of the three beds in the otherwise empty room, grunting softly as he pulled at something on the verge of tearing: the right sleeve of his black T-shirt. It was already torn some at the end of the sleeve, so his grip was on one of the corners formed by the tear. After a few tugs, he jerked his hand away from his shirt with the sleeve corner in tow, tearing it off and exposing the uppermost portions of his new appendage. Dropping the torn-off sleeve to the ground, Takashi exhaled in relief. “There, much better.” He rubbed the back of his head with his left hand and headed for the door. “Now to get to class,” he remarked unenthusiastically with a tinge of sarcasm, groaning as he glared forward, continuing onward until his presence darkened the shot. “Hope no one stares too much…”

********

From there, Takashi went about his day at the university. Or at least, he tried to. As if brought on by what he said before departing his dorm room, almost everyone around him was looking at him and his bulky robotic arm.

One such series of stares he received occurred when he was walking through the halls of one of the campus buildings. Doors on one side and windows on the other, Takashi calmly moved through with closed eyes, an indifferent scowl, and one hand barely in his pocket, the thumb hooking in. The students in the halls, mostly guys with the stray girl or two mixed in, couldn’t help but gaze at his arm as they passed by Takashi, or as Takashi passed by them. There, he emitted a small grunt as he passed by all the silent chatter.

Another instance was in one of Takashi’s classes, in a lecture hall with tables on multiple steps. While the professor was down in front, directing some of the class to the smartboard, Takashi was trying to take notes on his tablet. But instead of doing that, his eyes were clenched shut and his eyebrows were furrowed at the multiple others looking at him instead of the mystery lecture material. Those beside him, behind him, even those in front of him, either turned around or glancing back, were watching him, all gazes focused towards the robotic arm whose lower half rested on the table. There, he let out a softer yet more audible grunt.

A third was in the stairwell of another campus building. Takashi was walking up, his left hand gripping the railing, but instead of a calm demeanor, he wore an aggressively annoyed one. Clenched shut eyes, one of them twitching, and a mouth pursed and frowning. It was like he was trying his hardest to ignore the crowd of people behind him and the few at the top of the steps looking down at his free appendage, but was failing rather hard. There, he let out an appropriate, under-the-breath annoyed groan.

********

And then, he finally caught his breath, in the form of an exhausted sigh. “Man, I’m beat…”

It was the end of the late morning and the start of the early afternoon, as could be told by the number of people in one of the enclosed courtyards on campus. The walls of the building surrounded the stone-floored space, windows and doors lining three of them. It didn’t appear to be open to the sun either; sun shone in, but indirectly, as if it were coming in through a high, windowed roof. That which came in directly, on the other hand, was scant. Either way, large trees were scattered about the floor of the courtyard. Each was as large as a mature tree from a standard park, and was enclosed by a three-foot high stone wall filled with soil. Connected to these stone walls were wooden benches for people on campus. Sitting down on one of them was Takashi, legs spread, arms resting on his knees, and his gaze looking upwards. Sitting next to him was Tomoki, his hands buried in the pockets of his blue jeans. He wore a dark blue T-shirt today, which had a “the pillows” logo emblazoned across the front instead of none like Takashi’s shirt.

“Rough day, huh?” Tomoki asked.

“You could say that…” Takashi looked forward. “Couldn’t even take two steps without a bunch of weird glares.”

“Hey, shit like that happens when you’ve got an arm like that.”

Takashi growled under his breath and clenched his fists, human and robot alike.

Tomoki jumped slightly at Takashi’s subtle actions, yelping as he scooted away some. “Uh, forget what I said.”

Takashi then sighed, loosening the grip his hands had against themselves.

Tomoki leaned forward and looked right at Takashi. “But hey, speaking of which, what _happened_ last night that got you that arm anyways?”

“Oh yeah,” Takashi remarked as he looked up, then turning to Tomoki. “I _did_ say I’d tell you today, didn’t I?”

Tomoki grinned and nodded. “That’s right.”

Takashi turned back and looked up slightly. “To be honest, there’s not a whole lot to tell.”

As Takashi began his story to Tomoki, a pan of the courtyard before them went into effect. Some students sat on the benches surrounding the trees, chatting amongst one another, while others did the same whilst standing upright. Some walked past the groups, others came up and joined them. Against the back wall were multiple windows that served as the only direct source of sunlight into the courtyard. Visible out two of the three visible windows, the middle blocked by a group of girls, was blue sky with white clouds, and no sign of anything indicating that the yard was on ground level.

“On my way back from the store, I heard some shots coming from the alley nearby. For whatever reason, I rushed in, trying to figure out where they came from, and wound up getting shot myself.”

“No way, seriously!?” Tomoki asked excitedly.

“Yep.” As he responded, Takashi took out his current pack of cigarettes, two of his robot claws gripping them as a third tapped the bottom. “Arm came _clean_ off.” He brought the pack up to his mouth, pursed his lips around one of the cigarettes, and pulled the pack back, grunting and clenched his teeth down on the one end. “Would’ve died back there, if not for that weird girl.” He then took his lighter out of his left pocket, opening and flicking it, producing only sparks.

“Ohhh…” Tomoki grinned wide, resting his head against his right hand. “So there was a girl involved?”

“Mm-hmm.” After a few more flicks, the lighter finally produced a flame, which Takashi brought his cigarette to before flipping it shut. “A real stand-out, too.” He blew out some smoke as he stashed his lighter away and looked up. “Had blue hair, probably a dye job; huge breasts, bigger than any _I’ve_ seen before…”

As Takashi described her, Tomoki nodded along. “Hmm… And what else?”

Takashi took his cig out of his mouth and blew out some more smoke. “Just her outfit. Between the flashy bodysuit, the heart mask, and those huge-ass shoulderpad things…” He brought his hands up, pointing the fingers and claws upward and gently moving them up and down for emphasis. “…she looked like some sort of sentai show reject!”

“I dunno,” Tomoki remarked, looking forward lovingly. “Sounds like it could be sexy.”

“Yeah, I guess it _was_.” Takashi returned his cigarette to his mouth. “Anyways, she gave me this arm and told me to kill these assholes in black suits. SORIAs, I think.”

As Takashi resumed his story, Tomoki kept looking forward, humming softly as he began to fantasize within his mind. Those mystery thoughts didn’t last long, though, as he noticed something. With a soft gasp, he looked forward, his demeanor taking on a more serious air.

“So I killed ‘em all, which would explain all the blood from last night.”

“Look, Taka-san, that’s great and all, but about that girl…”

Takashi turned to Tomoki, raising his eyebrow. “What about her?”

Tomoki lifted up his arm and pointed forward. “Isn’t that her over there?”

“Hm?” Takashi turned in the direction Tomoki pointed.

Within seconds, his eyes widened in shock, trembling as a grunt escaped his lips with surely more cigarette smoke.

“No fucking way…”

There she was, in the distance, among the group of girls standing in front of the middle window to the outside. She stood in the middle, directly against the ledge of the window. Instead of the tight-fitting uniform from the previous night, she wore an orange-red tanktop that showed some cleavage, and a pair of tight-fitting denim jeans. With her mask out of the way, her face was out in the open, though the hazel color of her eyes were the only notable addition to her already attractive face. Her indigo hair was the same as it was before; slightly messy on top, going down to the nape of her neck, and spreading out to either side at the end for the extra tomboy effect.

It was Motoko, all right.

As she spoke with the other girls in her little group, laughing brightly afterwards with not a sound to be heard, Takashi came to the obvious conclusion before him.

“Yeah… It’s _gotta_ be…”

Tomoki lowered his arm and grinned, a wide smile coming across his face. “Damn, you weren’t kidding about her having big ones.” He leaned in some, his eyes widening. “Looks like she’s a G, maybe even an H.” Just as he finished his remark, he noticed that Takashi had stood up and walked past him, blinking as he watched him leave. “Hm? Taka-san?”

Back with Motoko, she continued talking with the two other girls, giggling in response to something one of them said. “Yeah, you’ve got _that_ right!” She let out another soft laugh, putting her right hand beside her mouth.

“Hey. Cosplayer bitch.”

“Hah?” Motoko lowered her hand and blinked once as she looked up at Takashi, standing before her.

Nonchalantly, he raised his right arm and pointed his claws behind him and off to the side the best he could. “Come with me.” Cut to black. “We need to talk.”

 **つづ** **く  
[to be continued]**


	2. Supplemental Material

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A collection of material relating to the original vision of NIBAI MUGENDAI, as a hypothetical anime with all of the details normal people who come up with their own anime wouldn't think to include.

**JAPANESE CAST**

Takashi Fujishima: Shinichiro Miki ( _Pokemon_ 's Kojiro/James, _Initial_ _D_ 's Takumi Fujiwara, _My Hero Academia_ 's Sir Nighteye)  
Motoko Kotegawa: Megumi Hayashibara ( _Neon Genesis Evangelion_ 's Rei Ayanami, _The Slayers_ 's Lina Inverse, _Karakuri Circus_ 's Shirogane Saiga)  
Tomoki Kumagai: Mitsuo Iwata ( _Initial D_ 's Itsuki Takeuchi, _Golden Boy_ 's Kintaro Oe, _Gleipnir_ 's Madoka)  
Hikari Kurosawa: Takahiro Sakurai ( _Code Geass_ 's Suzaku Kururugi, _Mr. Osomatsu_ 's Osomatsu Matsuno, _Mob Psycho 100_ 's Reigen Arataka)  
SOREA A: Shuhei Takubo  
SOREA B: Tatsuya Kuramochi  
SOREA C: Kisho Taniyama ( _Gurren Lagann_ 's Kittan, _NEEDLESS_ 's Saten, _Ahiru no Sora_ 's Kenji Natsume)  
SOREA D: Katsuhiro Tokuishi  
Nakagumo: Tetsu Inada ( _Turn A Gundam_ 's Harry Ord, _Kill la Kill_ 's Ira Gamagoori, _SSSS.Gridman_ 's Alexis Kerib)

**ENGLISH CAST**

Takashi Fujishima: Steven Jay Blum ( _Cowboy Bebop_ 's Spike Spiegel, _Samurai Champloo_ 's Mugen, _Toonami_ 's TOM)  
Motoko Kotegawa: Wendee Lee ( _Cowboy Bebop_ 's Faye Valentine, _The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya_ 's Haruhi Suzumiya, _Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin_ 's Kycilia Zabi)  
Tomoki Kumagai: Kirk Thornton ( _Gungrave_ 's Brandon Heat/Beyond the Grave, _Samurai Champloo_ 's Jin, _Sword Art Online_ 's Klein)  
Hikari Kurosawa: Steve Staley ( _Bleach_ 's Toshiro Hitsugaya, _Naruto_ 's Neji Hyuga, _Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans_ 's McGillis Fareed)  
SOREA A: Doug Stone  
SOREA B: Kaiji Tang  
SOREA C: David Vincent  
SOREA D: Keith Silverstein  
Nakagumo: Joshua Tomar

**MAIN STAFF**

**Original Work:** Production I.G, Kareta Gohsawa (a.k.a. me)  
 **Planning:** Masahiko Otsuka, Mitsuhisa Ishikawa  
 **Executive Producers:** Daisuke Katagiri (WOWOW), Mike Lazzo, Keith Crofford, Atsushi Moriyama, Jun Saitou, Katsuji Morishita, Kazuya Masumoto  
 **Series Composition:** Kareta Gohsawa  
 **Character Design:** Yoshiyuki Sadamoto ( _Neon Genesis Evangelion_ , _FLCL_ , _The Great Pretender_ ), Satoshi Ishino ( _Excel Saga_ , _No. 6_ , _A.I.C.O Incarnation_ ) **  
Chief Animation Director:** Tadashi Hiramatsu ( _His and Her Circumstances_ , _Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi_ , _Yuri!!! On Ice_ ) **  
Art Director:** Yusuke Takeda (Bamboo) ( _Ghost in the Shell: STAND ALONE COMPLEX_ , _Eden of the East_ , _Vinland Saga_ ) **  
Color Design:** Miho Tanaka (Studio Road) ( _Bunny Drop_ , _Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet_ , _Kimi Dake ni Motetainda._ )  
 **Mechanical Design:** Kenji Teraoka ( _Ghost in the Shell: STAND ALONE COMPLEX_ , _Mobile Suit Gundam 00_ , _Gundam Build Divers_ )  
 **3D Directors:** Makoto Endo (Tri-Slash), Shin'ya Sugai (Sublimation)  
 **Special Effects:** Masahiro Murakami  
 **Director of Photography:** Hiroshi Tanaka ( _Ghost in the Shell: STAND ALONE COMPLEX_ , _Eden of the East_ , _FLCL Progressive_ )  
 **Editing:** Junichi Uematsu ( _Yu Yu Hakusho: Ghost Files_ , _Ghost in the Shell: STAND ALONE COMPLEX_ , _Haikyu!!_ )  
 **Sound Director:** Yoshikazu Iwanami ( _Sword Art_ _Online_ , _JoJo's Bizarre Adventure_ , _PSYCHO-PASS_ )  
 **Music:** the pillows, N.M. Nagoya Band  
 **Music Production:** King Records  
 **Music Production Cooperation:** avex trax  
 **Producers:** Mamoru Inoue (WOWOW), Jason Demarco, Gou Shukuri, Masanori Goto, Mikio Gunji, Naoko Tsutsumi  
 **Assistant Director:** Kazuto Arai ( _FLCL Progressive_ director, _Hybrid x Heart Magias Academy Ataraxia_ , _Re:Creators_ episode director)  
 **Director:** Yoh Yoshinari ( _Little Witch Academia_ , _BNA: Brand New Animal_ )  
 **Animation Production:** TRIGGER ( _Kill la Kill_ , _Little Witch Academia_ , _Promare_ ), Production I.G ( _Ghost in the Shell_ , _PSYCHO-PASS_ , _Haikyu!!_ )  
 **Production Cooperation:** [adult swim]  
 **Presented by:** NIBAI MUGENDAI Production Committee, WOWOW

**END CREDITS STAFF**

**Script:** Kareta Gohsawa  
 **Storyboard:** Yoh Yoshinari  
 **Unit Director:** Kazuto Arai  
 **Animation Director:** Tadashi Hiramatsu  
 **Key Animation:** Hiroyuki Imaishi, Sushio, Takeshi Koike, Shuhei Handa, Hisao Dendo, Hitomi Hasegawa, Nobutoshi Ogura, Shota Sannomiya, Hideki Nakagawa, Shuichi Iseki, NAtsuki Yokoyama, Mai Yoneyama, Michelle Sugimoto, Kazumasa Ishida, Takafumi Hori, Megumi Kouno, Katsuzo Hirata, Takayuki Goto, Takenori Tsukuma, Yuki Nakajima, Satoshi Ishino, Tadashi Hiramatsu, Yoh Yoshinari  
 **2nd Key Animation:** Sachiko Yajima, Keisuke Kojima, Yuto Kaneko, Nahoko Kosugi, Production I.G (Akemi Yamakaji, Shingo Takenaka, Asami Mannen, Nonoko Suzuki), LIDEN FILMS, AI, Asahi Production, Jumondo  
 **In-Between Check:** Yasuhito Murata  
 **In-Between Animation:** TRIGGER (Takeshi Ikezawa, Hiroki Arai, Reo Itoyama, Masanobu Ishiyama, Hidenori Kato, Sohei Yoshikoshi), Khara (Moeka Koguchi, Yasushi Tokuda, Maiko Fujiwara, Yasuhito Murata), Production I.G (Reiko Sakai, Maiko Nogami, Misato Furubayashi, Kazumo Nakatsukasa, Minami Yamashita, Sae Fukushima, Shiki Amaha), Yukari Umebayashi, Studio 4°C, Studio Takuranke, M.S.J Musashino Production, Oh! Production, Anime Torotoro, Mugenkan, Anitus Kobe, Taikan Anime, R.I.C, FAI International, Triple A  
 **Color Setting:** Sayoko Noda  
 **Color Check:** Yuka Takeda  
 **Finish Animation:** Production I.G (Kazu Doi, Fujiko Oomori, Yuri Okada, Emiko Ueno, Yuuko Fujita, Mariko Shimokawa, Narumi Sakai, Erika Fujita, Shinji Matsubara, Noriko Arizawa, Tomomi Kitani, Rina Itou), Mika Sugawara, M.S.J Muasashino Production, Sunshine Corporation, Studio Elle, Studio Road, Taikan Anime, R.I.C, FAI International, Triple A  
 **Art Setting:** Naoki Arakawa  
 **Art Boards:** Ryusei Nishino, Harumi Okamoto  
 **Background Art:** Bamboo (Yoshiro Kajiwara, Takayuki Nagashima, Kayo Kojio, Izumi Hirabayashi, Eri Minakami, Takamasa Masuki, Tsukasa Kakizakai, Shoko Ochiai, Surok Chong, Kentaro Onuki, Chika Hirabuki, Yuha Yamauchi, Aya Sakurai, Yuko Shiromizu, Atsuko Sakakura, Tomomi Nakajima), Yuji Kaneko (TRIGGER)  
 **3DCGI:** Tri-Slash (Yuu Sudou, Naomiki Kobayashi, Kohei Higashi, Yoshihiro Tsukashita, Naoya Shiratori, Makoto Endo), Sublimation (Gou Kurosaki, Tomotaka Okuno, Naruho Kojima, Takahiro Kawaguchi, Kotaro Ito, Yohei Oishi, Shin'ya Sugai), Studio Khara Digital Department (Manabu Kobayashi, Yusuke Matsui, Hironobu Muto, Masanori Iwasato, Ryoichi Nakama)  
 **3D Layout:** Sublimation (Jun Koishikawa, Chiori Satou, Hiroki Tanji, Mirai Kondo)  
 **3D Modeling:** sankaku△  
 **3D Modeling Cooperation:** Fumihiro Shikama (Studio Khara Digital Department)  
 **2D Works:** Makiko Yamazaki  
 **Monitor Works:** sankaku△, Kichijoji Tron (Tomohiko Komiya, Daiki Ishigami, Akihiro Murase)  
 **Photography:** Fumio Furukawa, Miki Sakuma, Jun Taniuchi, Tetsuya Takahashi, Sakiko Murai, Maiko Koseki, Mirei Ogawa, Yumiko Nakata, Yukiko Matsumoto  
 **Photography Cooperation:** Sanzigen, Asurafilm  
 **Systems Managers:** Junichiro Aki, Toshikazu Sumida, Hiroshi Sugiashi  
 **Rolling Stock:** Komatsu Tsusho  
 **Sound Effects:** Daisuke Jinbo  
 **Recording Adjustment:** Kenji Hoshino  
 **Recording Assistant:** Nobutaka Hirooka  
 **Sound Production Manager:** Hiroki Urakari  
 **Recording Studio:** HALF H.P STUDIO  
 **Sound Production:** HALF H.P STUDIO  
 **Editing Assistants:** Taeko Hamauzu, Yoshinori Murakami  
 **Video Editing:** Sony PCL (Migaku Takagi, Tsuneyasu Hisashima)  
 **Music Cooperation:** Tao-Te-Swim, William Bergman, Roger Burn, Sound Scientists  
 **Music Production Cooperation:** Turner Music, Megatrax  
 **Music Director:** Kareta Gohsawa  
 **Music Mixing:** Skull Island (Jason Demarco & Brent Busby)  
 **Planning Cooperation:** Tsutomu Makino (WOWOW), Toshimichi Ootsuki, Atsushi Suzuki  
 **Assistant Producers:** Hiroshi Endoo (WOWOW), Gill Austin, Ryousuke Watanabe, Miharu Onodera, George Wada, Hiroyuki Imaishi  
 **Associate Producers:** Nahoko Kunieda (WOWOW), Christina Miller (Cartoon Network), Hideo Katsumata (avex pictures), Yosuke Wada (COSPA), Yasuhiko Hamada (Index), Yoshio Manabe (Ultra Super Pictures)  
 **Compilation:** Tetsu Kuchigochi (WOWOW), Kim Manning ([adult swim])  
 **Publicity Producer:** Hiroyoshi Isozaki (WOWOW), Michael Ouweleen ([adult swim])  
 **Publicity:** Rika Ootake (WOWOW), Tomoko Okunishi (WOWOW), Shannon McKnight, Yumina Shironaga, Risa Shibata, Hirotsugu Ose, TRIGGER Publicity Department (Hiromi Wakabayashi, Masayoshi Tachikawa, Tatsuki Tatemoto, Konatsu Nagai)  
 **Cooperation:** COSPA, Index, Foley Ishiguro (ASMB/UEMB member FoleyisGood149)  
 **Production Desk:** Ryosuke Inagaki (TRIGGER), Kazumitsu Kubota (Production I.G)  
 **Setting Production:** Yu Sato (TRIGGER), Hiroyuki Ogino (Production I.G)  
 **Production Affairs:** Hiromi Toyama (TRIGGER), Shojiro Tsugesaka (Production I.G)  
 **Literature Managers:** Nanami Higuchi (TRIGGER), Shun Fukutome (Production I.G)  
 **In-Between Manager:** Yuka Sofue  
 **Finishing Manager:** Izumi Hirose  
 **Photography Manager:** Fumio Furukawa  
 **Production Advancement:** Shunsuke Shita

**MUSIC ROSTER (all songs existing)**

"Advice (instrumental)" by the pillows ("It began as darkness..." to " **二倍無限大** **NIBAI MUGENDAI** ")  
"Reformat" by Tao-Te-Swim (" **track01: ベギニング** " to "Once the doors opened, he dropped the can into the bin.")  
"Tiki Tiki" by William Bergman and Roger Burn ("Elsewhere, someone slammed something down on a counter." to ""Sure thing."")  
"Crazy Sunshine" by the pillows ("And just as he pulled..." to ""Poor kid..."")  
"Recollect" by Sound Scientists ("It was Motoko, standing behind Takashi..." to ""Well, shit."")  
"I Think I Can" by the pillows ("The majority crowd of SOREAs looked on at Takashi..." to "With that, his work was done.")  
"Little Busters" by the pillows ("Pointed at the clock's remains was Takashi's XD..." to "Takashi turned in the direction Tomoki pointed.")

**ENDING THEME**

"Thank you, my twilight" by the pillows ( _FLCL_ , _Sket Dance_ ED #1, _Ahiru no Sora_ OP #1) - track #10 from the album _Thank You, My Twilight_

Lyrics and Music by Sawao Yamanaka; Distributed by King Records

**Animation Crew**

**Storyboard and Director:** Kenji Kamiyama ( _Ghost in the Shell: STAND ALONE COMPLEX_ , _Eden of the East_ , _Ultraman_ )  
 **Animation Director:** Takayuki Goto  
 **Key Animation:** Takayuki Goto, Naoya Furukawa, Motonobu Hori, Satoru Nakamura, Shinya Inoue  
 **In-Between Check:** Tomoko Sugata  
 **Color Setting and Check:** Yuriko Taniguchi  
 **Background Art:** Kayo Kojio, Takamasa Masuki, Ryusei Nishino  
 **3DCGI:** Makoto Endo (Tri-Slash), Chiori Satou (Sublimation)  
 **Photography:** Hiroshi Tanaka  
 **Production Advancement:** Hiroyuki Ogino

**Lyrics and Visuals**

COMING SOON, IF AT ALL

**TV CONTENT RATING**

Rated TV-MALV for suggestive dialogue, profanity, partial male nudity, and intense bloody violence

**Profanity Tally**

crap/crappy (3), hell/hell-bent/hell'd (20), damn/dammit (14), ass/asses/huge-ass (3), bastard/bastards (4), bitch (11), goddamn (2), assholes (2), shit (10), fuck/fuckin'/fucking/motherfucker (6)

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Motoko's PHEROMONE outfit is based off the super suit worn by Kaoruko Sashima in the 2005 anime "Akahori Gedou Hour Rabuge", within which Kaoruko is one of the two main characters in the segment "Zettai Seigi Love Pheromone".  
> 2\. SORE is pronounced "so-reh", not "soar".  
> 3\. In Japan, the driver’s side door is on the right side of the car, where the passenger’s side would be in America.  
> 4\. .45 ACP is a type of cartridge used in various guns. JHP is one of the cartridge types.  
> 5\. A Springfield Armory XD, better known as an HS2000, is a Croatian-made semi-automatic pistol. The kind of HS2000 Takashi uses is an XD 4” Compact Service Model with sleeve, which is capable of firing 13 rounds.  
> 6\. The Minebea PM-9, also known as the M9, is a Japanese-made machine pistol commonly used by the JSDF.  
> 7\. Wild Seven is a play on Mild Seven, the former name of Japanese cigarette brand Mevius. The logo is a flipped version of Mevius/Mild Seven’s existing logo. The false brand name is also used in "Battle Royale", which features a terrorist group called Wild Seven. The name is also shared by the long-running manga by Mikiya Mochizuki and its two anime adaptations.  
> 8\. The Minebea PM-9 fires 9x19mm Parabellum rounds, also known as 9mm Luger rounds.  
> 9\. For those who don’t know what “ovoid thorax” means, it’s an upper torso shaped like a 3D oval.  
> 10\. Chuunibyou is a Japanese term which means “Middle School 2nd Year Syndrome” describing a person with delusions of grandeur, typically the belief that one has special supernatural powers. Most people with this syndrome are 8th graders, but some adults have it too.  
> 11\. The buzzcut SOREA called in for backup while Motoko fought the young SOREA with the electric gun arm.  
> 12\. Furigana is a Japanese reading aid consisting of small hiragana or katakana placed above kanji characters.  
> 13\. SOREA is pronounced as “so-rei-ah”.  
> 14\. X-Tension magazines are the types of magazines Takashi uses with his XD, capable of holding 13 rounds.


End file.
